Video: Lulu Wang on “The Farewell”

The writer-director of the lauded indie film delves into its screenplay.

The Farewell was my favorite movie from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. From the official movie website:

In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken.

In this Vanity Fair video, Wang discusses some aspects of her scripting process for The Farewell.

One takeaway here from Wang’s own words:

Even though it’s a dialogue heavy scene, I wanted to make sure that we were always looking at something interesting on screen and reminded that there is a wedding that is supposed to be the focus of the story even though for Billy her mind is clearly on the impending loss of her grandmother.

This is a reminder that movies are primarily a visual medium. When Wang says this is a “dialogue heavy scene,” she infers there’s a lot of exposition going on and exposition is often the death of a story.

So how to handle a lot of dialogue and exposition? One way is to ‘shroud’ it with lots of visuals which is precisely what Wang does in the scene noted above beginning at 00:00:42.

Here is a trailer for the movie The Farewell:

Movie Website

Declare Your Independents! Go see The Farewell!