If it took sci-fi epic Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) to remind us of the importance of empathy this last year, then in 2017 it seems like the job falls to Michael Showalter’s The Big Sick, the most unexpected sleeper hit of the summer. Based on the true story of Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani’s romance with his future wife Emily V. Gordon, the film is a wickedly funny, devastatingly truthful look at prejudice and love’s power to overcome it.
Kumail (who plays himself) starts the film as a struggling stand-up comedian in Chicago who moonlights as an Uber driver. His immigrant Pakistani family are desperate to marry him off to a nice Muslim girl, and almost every night at dinner they have an “unexpected guest” in the form of an eligible young woman who just so happens to have a headshot for Kumail. But things change when he meets Emily (Zoe Kazan) at one of his shows. They hook up and fall in love. But Kumail refuses to tell his family about her, aware that they have already disowned one of their own for marrying an Irish woman. After learning about his duplicities, Emily breaks up with Kumail.
And that should have been the end of their story. But then Kumail gets a phone call in the dead of night: Emily’s very sick. She’s in the hospital and none of her other friends are able to make it there so won’t he please drop by and see if she’s okay? But immediately after arriving, he’s shanghaied by doctors who convince him to sign a series of papers giving them permission to put Emily in a medically-induced coma so they can fight a virulent, life-threatening lung infection. Afterwards, while still in a state of shock, Kumail calls Emily’s parents Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter, Ray Romano) who fly in from North Carolina. The two of them know full well about their rocky romance and are less than thrilled to see him. But when the doctors tell them that their original diagnosis for Emily is wrong and they’ll have to keep her in a coma for several more days while they figure out why her body isn’t reacting to the antibiotics, the awkwardness and contemptuousness between these three desperate strangers breaks down.
From a theological standpoint, it’d be easy to interpret this film as strictly symbolic: people from all walks of life come together into a common family through their love of Christ. Too easy, in fact. I think Showalter is trying to say something more about how we allow arbitrary differences in culture and religion divide us over insignificant things. Everyone seems opposed to Kumail and Emily’s relationship: when his parents find out that he’s marrying a white non-Muslim girl, they do indeed disown him. And though it’s never explicitly stated, it’s obvious that the country-music loving, white-bread Beth and Terry have their reservations about their daughter falling in love with a Muslim. But notice how Showalter introduces these stereotypes only to dismantle them. Beth might be a Southern drawl-speaking daughter of a military family, but she’s the first to defend Kumail when he gets called a member of ISIS at one of his comedy shows. Terry might be a reserved New York City bookworm, but he’s capable of powerful, explosive emotions, particularly concerning his family. And while Kumail’s Muslim family are extremely conservative, theirs is a home of love, laughter, and family with few reservations against adapting to American culture—marriage being the big one.
8/10
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