Saw Crazy Rich Asians. You need to. Go go go pay the money and go. Maybe eight times.

I’m not great at sitting through movies because sitting still is a challenge for me in general. I did not have a problem sitting through this film for a few reasons, not the least of which is, it’s a great movie! Sure, I do like romantic comedies sometimes. Many of them feel like something to flip on while I cook dinner or clean my shower. Not this romcom. The film itself is light and humorous in several places, which I found entertaining. The fashion tickled my fancy for sure. But the movie actually deals with a dense array of themes and issues that truly held my attention. I should say, the movie is based on a best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan- Kwan deserves the credit for this brilliance in intersecting themes.

Representation matters. Hollywood especially needs to heed this message a thousand times over. It matters that the cast of this film was not centered around white leads (or even supporting roles!) because so often, this centering creates a one-dimensional character that fills a stereotype or perhaps edgily fights against it, yet in the process of fighting still upholds that identity. It matters that the film actually focused on women character development more deeply than the men. It truly matters that this movie deals with class- albeit sometimes in a funny, glamorous way- because here in the United States, we don’t talk about class nearly enough. It also matters that this movie deals with fraught relationships and misogyny.

Without spoilers, intersectionality plays a big part in the conflicts between different characters.  Questions are left for us to answer- what is family, really, and how do we connect and support our own? How does the privilege of resource affect our bias? How can we live out feminism in different ways? The movie isn’t just important because it cast several Asian and Asian-American actors together- it is an essential commentary on how race, gender, class, language, culture, and sexuality define boundaries and sometimes clash within a single person’s identity.

I will not claim to find much commonality with most of the characters in the film because my context and privilege is different (also, I can look literally anywhere to see “me” represented in any field or sector). I spend much of my day immersed in questions of race, religion and class because my job is to interrogate how these concepts affect public life in the United States. One particular element did feel quite close to home. The film helped me begin to question how my family system affects my work in terms of what we “preserve,” what values we continue to uphold. Increasingly, my family and I clash in terms of what we value. My job is not to dismiss their traditions without engagement. Reflecting on the moments of change in our own values matter because we need to recognize the catalysts. Crazy Rich Asians matters because it is itself a catalyst in how Asian and Asian American identities are recognized as relatable but not one-dimensional. Final note- the soundtrack is amazing.