Editing as Imperfect Memory in THE FAREWELL
how Lulu Wang uses an unusual technique to great effect
The Farewell has several scenes where editing either stutters, seems to cross a line, or jumps into a similar-but-different setup. Not a strong stylisation, nor a mistake, it’s meant to evoke a feeling of repetition, experiencing something ‘similar but different’, using the edit to give us the same sort of experience the characters are having, even though they’ve been going through these conversations their whole life and we’re only seeing one.
Let’s break down how it works.
This segment is comprised entirely of two shots (lasting over 2 minutes, so shortened for our purposes). When the angle first switches at 0:20, the conversation continues smoothly, Nai Nai is touching Billie’s face the same way, and the lighting difference is extreme; so you may assume a reverse shot in an unusually ornate room, mirrors, and strange lighting because it’s photos.
The cutting and blocking intentionally gives us this impression; the cut comes between words, indistinct background noise of photographers carries across, in both shots Billi is on the left, Nai Nai on the right, and Nai Nai's right hand reaches to gently touch the face of a sad Billi.
But after a beat and a few blinks, you realise it’s a completely different place and time.
In the mirror the groom and bride are in on stairs, without a blue background or pink prop hearts. Nobody else is in frame, even though we could see and hear several people milling about moments earlier. Billi and Nai Nai's faces are so much lighter; they're definitely in another place, but continuing their conversation.
The effect is not déjà vu, but something adjacent; a conversation between Billi and Nai Nai which has similar patterns and give-and-take to dozens of conversations they’ve had.
We greet our partners with the same intonation when the phone rings, we have the same conversation with our mother every few months; we get distracted because ‘how was your day?’ "‘it was fine, I fill in the blank” is repeated repeated, we go on autopilot, until it feels like we blink and we’re having the same conversation again . . .
In other words it feels exactly like this cut, a feeling as familiar to us as the conversation to the characters. Nai Nai has her prejudices and hasn’t changed her mind abut certain of them for forty years. Billie has her rehearsed answers. We're constantly immersed in patterns not quite the same as last time, interim words and conversations and gestures clipped in our minds because we know how they will go. — they've gone similarly before.
Lulu Wang masterfully uses framing and editing techniques to hit on the rhythms we repeat with those we know best, creating the feeling of constant cycles without ever actually recycling scenes or conversations.
Within context of The Farewell as a whole, these cuts suggest something else about memory; when faced with loss, we desperately want to hold onto details of our loved ones, even the mundane ones, whether from ‘the archives’ or a well-worn conversation we’re having with full knowledge it may be the last.
But the mind doesn't work that way.
Our memories muddle twenty similar conversations into one, it doesn’t (can’t) attach the importance to these conversations we — in hindsight — want to. Film has the capability to show one conversation in full all the way; by not doing so in many scenes, instead using unusual edits like the above, The Farewell mimics the way our memories actually congeal, and the vague ache of loss we have because of it.
