THE LONG GOODBYE: FILM REVIEW
Aneil Karia’s The Long Goodbye is a searing look into what it’s like to be treated as a foreigner in your own country — placing a British South Asian at the crux of an everyday nightmare. The 12-minute short is an accompaniment to rapper-actor Riz Ahmed’s (who plays the film’s protagonist) second album of the same name. The album, released in 2020, was inspired partly by anti-immigrant sentiments in a post-Brexit world and explores the tumultuous relationship between British Asians and the UK — particularly during a time of heightened racism and xenophobia.
The Long Goodbye opens with a light-hearted scene depicting a relaxed family gathering. Ahmed is teaching his younger brother how to dance in the living room while the women in his family excitedly prepare for an upcoming wedding. News of spreading violence plays on the television in the background, but Ahmed barely pays any notice. The film takes its time to situate the family in normal circumstances: furniture needs to be moved around to make more space, hair needs to be curled, and the family gossips about who people are bringing as dates to the wedding. When Ahmed hears loud noise coming from outside, he casually peeks out the bedroom window. Across the street are men with guns rounding up his neighbors in black vans. The film’s tone shifts.
Ahmed starts yelling at his family members, urging them to hide in the short time they have before the men dressed in black reach their house. What was a normal sequence of events suddenly dissolves — and the family finds themselves as the target of a senseless hate crime.
The film’s cinematography and soundtrack intentionally diverges with the painful events at hand — jolting the viewer and creating a sense of awareness through carefully curating elements of the film that live outside the frame. The colors of the film exude warm hues — as shades of soft yellows, browns, and beiges dictate the look and feel of each scene. When the men covered in black come around, it provides a stark contrast to the peaceful afternoon that we were presented with just moments before. When they begin forcefully rounding up Ahmed’s family members, a hard rap song from Ahmed’s album plays over the scene, as opposed to somber and dramatic music. The personal is always political, Ahmed seems to state.
The short concludes with a rap monologue from Ahmed, taken from his track “Where You From”: “Now everybody everywhere want their country back / If you want me back to where I'm from then bruv I need a map,” he spits as he rises from his knees. The film closes with Ahmed looking straight at the camera as he says, “My tribe is a quest to a land that was lost to us / And its name is dignity /So where I'm from is not your problem bruv.” In just twelve minutes, Karia and Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye powerfully integrates the mediums of music and film to describe the painful feeling of being broken up with your own country — and the immense, everyday fears that come with it.