Graphic Journey Blog

A Chinese cracker: The Farewell

It amazes me at just how often trailers can put you off a film. I caught one for the 'The Farewell' last week at my local, and in those three minutes of a smorgasbord of scenes it alluded to a cute, sentimental, feelgood, saccharine looking tale. So, I avoided it.

But I went after all last night and it turned out to be a beautifully crafted, funny, tender and thought-provoking story, written and directed by Lulu Wang, and is an autobiographical tale about her grandmother.

It centres on Billi, excellently played by Awkwafina, a first-generation Chinese immigrant having moved from China to New York as a six-year-old with her parents, leaving behind her much loved grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen).

Now in her mid-twenties Billi is a feisty, opinionated, free-spirited American, far removed from the Chinese culture of her parents. All three have embraced American citizenship with few Chinese friends. But Billi maintains close links with her grandmother Nai Nai via regular phone calls to China during which Nai Nai fields endless directives, " - are you wearing a hat, eating properly, wrapped up warm, is there a special person in your life?" These calls are a way for Billi to hold on to those special memories shared at her grandmothers as a six-year before being whisked away by her parents to the US to find work.

This is how we are introduced to the two main characters, with Billi striding through the frenetic streets of New York chatting on her mobile, while in Changchun, China Nai Nai sits with her mobile in a hospital waiting area, something that she doesn't let on to Billi. But we see that she has undergone tests for something sinister.

Later Billi walks into a silent atmosphere of her parents flat and finds her dad sitting motionless with his head facing the wall. She demands to know what is going on, thinking it must be divorce on the cards. Her emotional father tells Billi that his aunt has phoned to inform him that Nai Nai has cancer with 6 months to live. But the diagnosis has been kept from Nai Nai, common practice in China not to reveal this sort of information to an elderly parent.

Meanwhile, in Changcurn, the wider family members have concocted a fake wedding to get the whole family together to see Nai Nai before she dies. She is oblivious to the subdiffusion, believing she is fine health. And so as the matriarch of the family, Nia Nai takes on the responsibility of negotiating and organising the marriage party, just the way she wants it in true Chinese fashion.

Billi's parents have agreed to fly to Changcurn to take part in the fake marriage event and attempts to dissuade Billi from going, for fear that she will spill the beans to Nai Nai about her condition. But they fail in their attempt and there is no stopping her.

From then on the action transfers to the sprawling mass of Changcurn, with its endless concrete shoddily built highrise dwellings. Lulu Wang uses the camera to make non-verbal criticisms about the country of her distant childhood where there were once trees, gardens and fields, now long swept away by so-called progress and an ever-expanding population.

We are thrown into Chinese family life with the endless round of gargantuan eating, with all the women sharing the task of preparing food in the ingrained collective fashion, while the men drink beer and smoke. Nia Nai is at the centre of things fussing over Billi, forcing her to eat more and take exercise, something she does herself every day. The family chat, laugh and argue but all the time suppressing their truce sadness for being there. The finale is the most vulgar wedding party, with karaoke, emotional speeches, dancing, party games and morose drunkenness. and another of Lulu Wang non-verbal comments. throughout the party we see a small obese boy wandering around the party glued to his mobile, completely disengaged from those around him.

And all the time Billi has the bursting urge to tell Nia Nia the truth. She takes the microphone and instead makes an emotional statement of love for her grandmother. The next day Nia Nia is rushed to hospital. Everyone attends and she shrugs it off as a slight cold.

Eventually it is time for Billi and her parents to return to the US and there is a touching scene where Nia Nia wishes them a safe journey and Billi silently holds on to her, head buried in her shoulder, The family drives away and Billi watches Nia Nia standing upright and proud in the road, as she fades away in the rear window. We momentarily see Nia Nia bowing her head in a very controlled display of emotion. Lulu Wang manages to avoid the film falling into sentimentality.

But there is a delightful twist in the tail, that I won't spoil for you. Go and see it yourself, and whatever you do, don't watch the crappy trailer.

 

Cover story

 

Noma Bar’s beautiful 2017 hardback edition of The Handmaid's Tale with its blind embossed type.

The Testaments: probably the most eagerly anticipated book since – well, the last Harry Potter? Anyway, more about this later.

This is one of my now occasional posts on Graphic Journey. Most of the traffic has been swallowed by Twitter and Instagram these days. But there are times when I need more than 280 characters to make a point.

If you are a follower of this blog, you will know that I have a bit of a thing about book covers. It stems from a ten-year stint in publishing back in the mid-1960s to ‘70s and after that period when I ran my design consultancy. These days, I regularly comment on Instagram and Twitter about the covers I see during my slightly obsessional weekly visits to bookshops. In the process, I seem to have upset many designers with my views. Conversely, many have agreed with me. The only reason I bother is that I have enormous affection for the design discipline when they are good and respect for their creators.

So, back to The Testaments. Do I have a beef with it? I do. The recent hubbub of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, including the attempted cyber-attack, Amazon’s cock-up, the linking illustration with the first novel, the shortlisting for the Booker Prize, along with Atwood’s recent unveiling of the new cover design... you’d have to be living on Mars not to be aware of the media buzz.

Noma Bar’s lastest outing for Margaret Atwood's new book, with the most unnecessary typographical intervention.

Why then the need to partially obscure Noma Bar’s clever illustration with type? Was it even necessary to have Atwood’s name on the front at all? Bar’s illustration, linking with the original Handmaid’s cover, would have done the job perfectly without it.

A more sensitive approach.

Even better would have been to confine author and title to the spine – now that would have been an audacious move, especially as the cover is now in every bookshop window throughout the country. It’s all over the internet and in all the literary sections of the newspapers and magazines. To have been brave enough to run with an image-only front cover would have added to the publicity buzz.

And a more audacious approach.

But, these days, no one dares to stick their head above the parapet. Instead, they follow the predictable rules of the unadventurous publishing marketing departments, with their ‘belt and braces’ formula of unadventurousness. Their raison d’être seems to be to screw up covers during the creative process.

And just to remind you, there have been some brave exceptions...

The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ cover, designed by artist Richard Hamilton 1968.

And David Pearson’s wonderful redacted Orwell’s ‘1984’ cover for Penguin 2013.