LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE
A rom-com. That’s what I found out when I looked up “The Big Sick” on Wikipedia an hour or two following a screening I watched. I sure as hell didn’t go in expecting a rom-com. I sure didn’t feel like I was watching a rom-com. And as I left the cinema, all I felt like I’d just seen was simply a great tale of love and humour. Yes, those words are synonyms of romantic and comedy.
Michael Showalter’s 2017 film “The Big Sick” has emerged from nowhere as one of the year’s leading contenders in the coming award season. Written as a quasi-autobiographical piece by writer and lead Kumail Nanjiani as well as his wife Emily V. Gordon, “The Big Sick” excels as a heartfelt, hilarious and fresh take on the traditional ‘rom-com’. Instead of weaving a cliche tale of star-crossed over-achievers, it explores issues around cross-cultural relationships, personal ambition and struggle between loyalty to self against family. It’s one of those films that has slotted almost perfectly in the current climate of racial disquiets, unease and suspicion. But where “The Big Sick” could stamp it’s feet and blow it’s trumpet about heroi-ing the tale of Nanjiani’s ‘American Dream’ experience in trying to become a Pakistani-born, USA-raised comedian against his family wishes, it takes a step back to respect the relationship between on-screen Nanjiani (Nanjiani) and girlfriend Emily (Kazan).
Though much of the film’s superb character dynamics rest on Nanjiani’s interactions with Emily’s parents (Romano & Hunter) once Emily falls ill and eventually into a medically-induced coma. It almost becomes painful to watch these three forced to live together, be in an apartment, a hospital waiting room or simply in their own personal dramas that exemplify in wake of Emily’s sickness. Romano in particular flexes both dramatic and a more serious sense of comedic ability in his role as a father trying to do best by his daughter and his increasingly estranged wife. The three characters attempts to keep their lives on track amidst the tragedy around Emily is what drives the film. To think that a rom-com can keep it’s female lead unconscious for two-thirds of the film and still be considered a successful rom-com is why this film is one of the more astounding of the film calendar so far.
“The Big Sick” reinvigorates the rom-com genre for the 2010s generation. An honest story about love and death that manages to weave in a deep exploration of a coming-of-identity-in-America story amongst a meet-the-parents, a defy-family-culture and many more hyphenated themes that make this movie feel like one of the most complete of recent times.