Curiouser 1: Sonic Significance in The Farewell

Billi and her grandmother.

My father gave me a pair of the new Apple AirPods Pro for Christmas. They are a significant step up from the previous versions in form factor (the old ones never stayed in my ears), cost, as well as specs. The sound quality is a little better, the bass is more resonant, but most importantly they have noise cancelling. It was the noise canceling that helped me isolate something remarkable in a film that helped me feel a little less alone.

I watched *The Farewell* on an airplane and, not only that, the American flight that I was on didn’t have built in screens. I watched The Farewell on my phone. There are filmmakers that cringe at the thought of people consuming their work on a 4 inch screen and, even though I find a lot of the hyperbole overblown, it is objectively the worst way to experience a movie — at least until Apple makes it possible to stream Scorsese to a watch.

I knew next to nothing about the movie and If I’m being honest, I chose to watch *The Farewell* because I was coming off the high of seeing *Parasite*. An impulse that is transparently racist but, in my defense, I had just had a transcendent experience watching a subtitled film with an East Asian cast and I was desperate to recapture that feeling even though I knew it would more than likely mellow as I kept consuming like subsequent sips of a sweet drink.

I had one other reason for checking out the film. A friend of mine, Alex Weston, had done the score. Alex and I worked together a few years ago. He actually scored my first feature film and, at this point and time, his work on *The Farewell* had landed him on the short list for the Academy Awards (he didn’t end up with a nomination.)

I was excited to hear Alex’s work and curious about this quiet little indie that people with “good taste” seemed to like. I won’t summarize or critique the film other than say the cast was remarkable and the story struck a very personal chord. I choked up when Billi and her family drive away leaving her grandmother holding back tears in the rear window. I have a similar memory of my great-grandmother holding her hand out, sobbing in a language I didn’t really understand as my family and I left to the airport to fly half way around the world. It was the last time I saw her.

In addition to drawing parallels to my personal memories the themes that the film wrestles with, of the east versus west and the subtle but significant difference in value systems, resonated with me even though my family is Indian rather than Chinese. As Billi’s Uncle tries to convey there is a real difference between America and Asia. One that those of us with Asian heritage who grow up in the United States struggle to understand.

It’s that central conflict — Billi butting heads with her cultural heritage, traditions, and values that make the film remarkable and touching. Though, despite a compelling screenplay, well acted performances, and brilliant production design it was Alex’s score of all things that helped me not only understand the film’s message about that conflict but clarify my own understanding of my cultural anxiety.

I haven’t spoken to Alex about the film and don’t know what his intention or direction was for the music but it is jarring. The score is orchestral and in this indie film with very indie aesthetics, it’s noticeable. You can’t help but hear it. It was distracting lending a layer of anxiety to scenes that would otherwise be a melancholy car ride or a walk to a hotel room. Initially, this was confusing though not surprising. Alex has style that is sometimes bizarre or bombastic — he does work for Phillip Glass after all.

It wasn’t until Billi’s sadness and pain shifts to frustration and anger that I realized that I was meant to be distracted by the music. The anxiety that it was inducing was the point. The music is beautiful — heavy with strings and angelic choral melodies that echo through what can only be a stone cathedral, drawing from western classical music that drips with tradition. Its detail demands your attention only for its vastness to remain incomprehensible. It is a reflection of Billi’s relationship with her cultural heritage. It’s a reflection of *my* relationship with my cultural heritage.

The history that I’ve inherited feels ancient and important but at the same time frustrating, out of place, and sometimes just way, way too loud. It’s not something that you can wrap your hands around, or see, or even taste. If you grew up steeped in it, you’d just get it — intrinsically — and you could describe it — sort of — so that those of us that grew up in the west would get it — kind of. To borrow an orientalist image, it’s obscured in a vale of mysterious mist.

I connected, hard, with Billi’s anger and her family’s frustration as they try in vain to make her understand. But she can’t. In the end, she just goes with it, in sullen defeat, without knowing if she understands more than when she began.

Despite what I’ve just described I left the film content and more at peace with my own struggle with an opaque cultural history. The last image of the film drives the point home. What we take home, what we bring back west, isn’t the food or the lessons and sayings. When Billi is on the street in the final moments of the film she shows that what we hold onto, what connects us and can make us more whole, is outwardly trivial yet personally significant. It’s confusing, etherial, visceral, and joyful. It’s- HA.