The Globe and Mail - 30.07.2019

Energy

Cannabis

Western Canada

THREE NEW WAYS TO STAY CONNECTED

THREE NEW GLOBE NEWSLETTERS

» SIGN UP FOR THE GLOBE NEWSLETTERS ATglobeandmail.com/newsletters

Quality journalism in your inbox.

Get the top news in the areas that interest you — delivered to your inbox — now including:

+WESTERN CANADA

The latest news and issues from our B.C. and Alberta bureaus, every Saturday

+CANNABIS

The stories on how legalization of cannabis is affecting Canadians, twice weekly

+ENERGY

News and analysis covering the Canadian and international energy industry, including breaking news

on pricing, production and policy, sent weekdays

A12 OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | TUESDAY,JULY30,

LIFE&ARTS PARENTING&RELATIONSHIPS| OPINION| PUZZLES | WEATHER

The question

A few years ago, I sold my house
in a large urban area and moved
to a small community to be
closer to my siblings. The move
coincided with the start of my re-
tirement and the need to rewire
my life after the death of my wife.
Despite inviting and paying for
my sisters and their husbands to
join me on two winter vacations
and playing host to dinners at my
house, the only contact with the
sisters occurs when I take the ini-
tiative. I have been told to find a
partner and then, presumably, I
will be included in activities.
Is this just bad behaviour or
the way things are done in small
communities?

The answer

The former, i.e. bad behaviour.

I’ve lived in small communi-

ties. Admittedly, it’s a small sam-

ple size, therefore unscientific,

and I suppose there are small

communities where everyone is

standoffish, snobby, uptight, su-

perior and cliquey.

(Make a good TV show:Stand-

offish Junctionor maybeSnobby

Acres.)

As a teenager, I went to live

and work on a farm in Wanam-

ingo, Minn., population 620.

Sure, they played pranks on

me, the city boy. In the early

days, I was very pleased and

chuffed to find myself driving a

tractor, pulling a “drag,” basically

a fine-toothed version of a plow.

I pulled up next to the barn

and said, perhaps a little too far-

merishly for such a greenhorn:

“Where should I put the drag?”

“We usually take it apart and

store it in that tree,” the farmer

said, straight-faced. “You climb

up and we’ll hand the parts up to

you.”

I climbed the tree and awaited

further instructions. Down on

the ground, the farmer and his

son kept it together for a minute,

then cracked up, nearly splitting

their sides laughing at my gulli-

bility.

But I always felt warmly wel-

comed in that town. Pot lucks,

dinners, barbecues, everyone in

and out of each other’s houses

and chatting in friendly fashion

at the town’s lone diner – and if

you ever had any kind of trouble,

your fellow Wanamingoans flew

to your assistance.

I’m also one generation re-

moved from farm folk and thus

have spent a fair share of time in

small communities – so I would

say: No, the way your siblings are

behaving is not, as far as I’ve ever

seen, typical of small communi-

ties.

It’s not even typical of decent

human beings. I find it

outrageous, in fact. They know

perfectly well you picked up

stakes, loaded up a van or truck,

purchased or rented a new home

in a new town, all so you could be

near them – and then don’t in-

vite you over?

They have accepted your ge-

nerosity (the trips) and your hos-

pitality, so we know it’s not sim-

ply that they can’t stand your

company. And the only com-

ment they offer is: “Get a

girlfriend and maybe we’ll invite

you over”?

It’s stunning. Shocking, really.

But of course you can’t compel

people to invite you. Whom they

have over is obviously up to

them.

In his cult-classic advice book

How to Do Things Right,L.Rust

Hills outlines various “social

cruel rules.”

Social Cruel Rule No. 3 is: “Un-

interesting people invite you to

their house; you do not invite

them back. You invite interesting

people to your house; they do

not invite you back.”

Let’s set aside all this interest-

ing/uninteresting business for

the moment and just say certain-

ly there are people you invite

over who don’t invite you back,

and vice versa. I’ve been on both

sides of that transaction.

It’s just a shame that in this

case it’s your own flesh and

blood, people you moved to be

closer to. I think you should go

ahead and tell them it’s hurting

your feelings. Might not have an

immediate effect, but maybe

eventually, they’ll scratch their

heads and have a little

compassion and say to them-

selves: “Hmmm, he is a widower

and maybe lonely and did move

to be closer to us. Perhaps we

could invite him over even be-

fore he gets a girlfriend.”

But the real question in my

mind is: Do you really want to

hang out with siblings who are

willing to treat you so shabbily?

Maybe it’s time to get out

there in your new town, play

bridge, bingo, bocce ball, whatev-

er’s on offer (not trying to be

ageist/small-town-ist here, just

choosing activity ideas at ran-

dom), make some new friends

who might actually have you

over to their homes, maybe even

meet a love interest, then when

your siblings finally invite you

over, say: “Hmm, I’ll have to

check my schedule and get back

to you.”

Are you in a sticky situation? Send

your dilemmas to

[email protected].

Please keep your submissions to

150 words and include a daytime

contact number so we can follow

up with any queries.

Mysiblingswon’tinvitemeanywhereuntilIfindapartner.Isthatnormal?

DAVID
EDDIE

OPINION

DAMAGECONTROL

I

f you have a grandma, and you
have a heart, you might leave
The Farewellin tears. I’ll admit
to being a little damp after watch-
ing Lulu Wang’s second film,
“based on an actual lie,” about
her family’s true story of lying to
her grandmother about her can-
cer diagnosis and the subsequent
long goodbye. Although I am not
the first: As Wang has witnessed
firsthand, fans have not stopped
approaching, misty-eyed, telling
her about their own grandmas.
It’s even happened while getting
her morning coffee.
“You’re the director of the film
from last night!” her barista real-
izes. He goes on: “I hadn’t talked
to my grandma in a few months
and I love my grandma, so the
first thing I did was I woke up su-
per early so I could call her.” Her
coffee run has been interrupted a
few times now and for Wang it is
far from getting old. “It means a
lot,” she says.
It’s this sort of universal expe-
rience, that of family, that has
helped heap buzz onThe Farewell
as it opens to wider audiences in
the United States and Canada
this week. But by Hollywood film
convention, it’s a surprise it was
made at all, and as true to the
writer-director’s specific vision as
the one that earned her rejec-
tions from potential partners
early in the pitching process. “I
think they overlooked just how
many people would resonate
with this feeling of being in be-
tween two different worlds and
two different cultures,” she tells
me in conversation at a hotel bar
in Toronto, where the film
opened last week.The Farewellfo-
cuses on Billi (played by break-
out actress Awkwafina as Wang’s

stand-in), who is startled not

only by the news of Nai Nai’s

(Shuzhen Zhou) failing health,

but by her extended family’s de-

cision to follow a common Chi-

nese practice of keeping sick

loved ones in the dark – for the

sake of their health, goes the log-

ic. So Billi, stubbornly holding

out hope for a more Western

truth to prevail, and a standout

cast of parents and various elders

holding steadfast to their Eastern

collectivism, descend on Chang-

chun, China. There, they eat lots,

they fight to express their love

their way and they (secretly) pay

their respects to grandma in the

guise of a wedding banquet for a

grandson.

It was only after telling her sto-

ry on the podcastThis American

Lifethat savvy producers began

to see the movie within. Eventu-

ally, a raved-about screening at

Sundance turned into a reported

$6-million to $7-million deal

with A24 in the U.S. In the proc-

ess, Wang and her production

partners turned down nearly $15-

million from a streaming service

to work with the darling indie

distributor. Back in those early

days of rejections, Wang says she

would get asked: What are the

stakes? “Oh, the stakes are losing

the grandma,” she would answer.

“It almost seems like Hollywood

was saying an 80-year-old Chi-

nese grandma is not high enough

stakes to make a movie around.

No, it’s not the apocalypse, but

on the inside it feels like the

apocalypse when someone who

you love dies. You can make

things feel high stakes by how

you approach the subject mat-

ter.”

Wang’s approach to the sub-

ject matter is a story wrapped in

hard-earned specificity, with au-

thenticity as its reward. What

struck me, in a much different

way than a Hollywood suitor, was

the script, which is predominant-

ly in Mandarin and subtitled on

screen.The Farewellisn’t a foreign

film, but it deals in foreignness.

Multiple times, Billi stops the

flow of conversation to ask what

something means –mei nu, she’s

told, means “beautiful girl,” or a

more complicated phrase trans-

lated as “raising a kid is like play-

ing the stock market” – all these

new-found idioms that have

passed her by since leaving China

as a six-year-old (much like

Wang’s own immigration to Mia-

mi at the same age). It’s a feeling I

know too well as a very non-flu-

ent Cantonese speaker, and my

wife, too, as a fluent Polish speak-

er who left that country at a

young age like the director. “She

can’t communicate the truth, but

on a deeper level, she literally

can’t communicate things be-

cause of her limited language

abilities,” Wang says.

Even the little English spoken

is wielded to sharp cross-cultural

effect: In one pivotal scene, Billi

prudently switches languages

when speaking to a doctor in her

Nai Nai’s presence. “I’ve done

that!” she tells me of speaking

English with her mom in front of

her grandma. “But then she

might intentionally respond in

Chinese, to throw me under the

bus. It’s all of these levels of how

we use language to evade, but al-

so confront.”

More helpfully, her parents

lent a hand in making the Man-

darin of the initial script more

colloquial to better capture the

energy of the semi-fictionalized

family; Wang felt the language

too formal after getting back a

version from a translator. It’s the

mark of a filmmaker fully in tune

with the cadences of her work,

but a refinement that risks being

lost on viewers. I wonder, per-

haps too much like an executive,

and ask: As more audiences see

her film, so specific as to shoot in

Changchun, her grandma’s real-

life hometown, who will most ap-

preciate its most personal

touches?

“I think everyone,” she starts.

“But first and foremost, it’s for

me. If I don’t resonate with it,

then I’m going to bump every

time I watch the movie.” Beyond

that, she’s confident that non-

Chinese speakers need not

literally comprehend the nu-

ances – they will feel them. “Be-

cause it’s texture, it rises above

the literal words. It’s just a feel-

ing.”

In the near future, there’s

promise of yet more fascinating

wrinkles in how audiences view

The Farewell: Recently it picked

up a Chinese distributor. A Man-

darin-language Western film cen-

tred on a Chinese-American pro-

tagonist and set in China has no

real precedent in, well, China. Bil-

li will be a test case for whether

the character will resonate with

young Chinese the same way she

has with children of immigrants

in New York, Los Angeles, Toron-

to and Vancouver. In that regard,

Wang remains absolutely trust-

ing that her film’s cultural appeal

will be just as familiar in global

cities such as Beijing and

Shanghai.

“If you’re making internation-

al friends, if you’re picking up

from Western media, I think that

your perspective on the world,

on life, is going to be very differ-

ent from that of your older fam-

ily,” she observes of her birth

country’s modern dynamic. “I do

think that young people will see

themselves in Billi even if they’re

not American.”

The Farewell’s push and pull –

between truth and lies, individu-

al and group, East and West – feel

like parallels to Wang’s grappling

with Hollywood’s machinations.

In some compromised alternate

reality, we may have hadThe

Farewell, the romantic comedy

starring Billi with a side helping

of grandma, or a juxtaposed

character conjured up to repre-

sent Chinese values. How hard

was it for Wang to remain com-

mitted to the exacting story she

wanted to tell?

“Whenever someone would

disagree with me, I would just tell

them they’re racist,” she says

with a quick laugh. “I’m joking,

I’m kidding!” She acknowledges

her luck on this project, and will

work with producers at Big Beach

again on her next feature, a sci-fi

thriller calledChildren of the New

World. “I’ll just continue to fight

for what I believe in and that’s all

I can do really.”

For now, she is letting the ba-

ristas of the world be her gauge

forThe Farewell’s success.

“If my film does nothing else

but get people to call the ones

they love and make them recog-

nize that they haven’t talked to

them in a while, that’s already a

tremendous butterfly effect. I just

imagine all of these phone calls

across the world to grandmas

and it makes my heart happy.”

The Farewellopened July 26 in

additional Canadian cities.

TheFarewellisatearfulremindertocallourgrandmas

LuluWang’sfilmis

basedonherfamily’s

experiencewith

hergrandmother’s

cancerdiagnosis,

andthelonggoodbye

CLIFFLEE

LuluWang’ssecondfilmdepictstheculturalstrugglebetweenEastand

Westasafamilylearnstheirgrandmotherhascancer.JOYCEKIM/NYT

| NEWS