Time Hurts: ‘How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies’

Time scars, time wounds and marks, whether you’re old or young

When we are kids, we don’t value time. We have so much of it that it feels infinite, inexhaustible. We don’t understand age yet (at least not the way that later becomes poignant), so the 40-50-year gap between us and our grandparents is virtually incomprehensible. Throughout our childhood, Grandpa and Grandma are just other adults like our parents. But when we turn from tweens into teenagers, the social chasm between us and them grows wider. The older they get, we feel, the less they understand us, can grasp our dreams and desires, and the less they can connect. Their time is passing, and ours is just beginning.

I vividly remember what my teen brother said after Dad told him that our grandfather died. “But… I’ve been meaning to go and see him for weeks," he uttered, baffled and hurt like a little child who hasn’t yet been taught what death is. When you’re a kid, time is a still pond. You can dip and float in it, thinking it will never dry out. When you’re old, it’s a rushing river. You can’t slow it down, swim against it, and you know it will drown you eventually.

Writer-director Pat Boonnitipat’s Thai surprise hit, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, not only captures time with beautiful poignancy from two far-removed perspectives but shows us that the extensive generational gap between them is bridgeable. Though his movie starts out as one of those malicious Asian social thrillers (like Parasite) that hijacked the zeitgeist of the genre in the past five years, its true intentions are as pure and heartfelt as it gets. HTMMBGD doesn’t have a mean bone in its body.

M (Putthipong Assaratanakul) is a Uni dropout who tries to make a living as a video game streamer at his mom's place. But four people watching you play online isn't quite the career he dreamed of. Though he fooled his mother once, she doesn't budge again when he asks her for money. She tells him to go and find work.

M is lazy and aimless like most dropouts and wants easy money. When he visits his cousin Mui (Tontawan Tantivejakul), she’s looking after their paternal grandfather, who's bedridden and dying. Mui explains to M that she plays the long game. When the old man bites the dust, she hopes, he’ll leave her his estate that’s worth a fortune — which he does. Naïve and ignorant as M is, he believes he can do the same to his maternal grandma, Mengju (a fantastic Usha Seamkhum). But Mengju sees through her grandson instantly. What she doesn't know is that she has cancer. Her children, M's mother, and his two uncles decide to hide the diagnosis that her doctor tells them in private. M thinks otherwise: this is his chance to earn grandma’s trust and let him take care of her while she’s doing chemo, hoping to get the same outcome as Mui did.

Even if you haven’t seen the viral videos online where viewers cry their eyes out while watching the movie, you know where this is going. By moving in and spending most of his time with Mengju, M begins to bond with her deeply and intimately. They get to know each other — feel each other out. Though M doesn't give up on his plan to inherit her home, he realizes pretty soon what he's doing is wrong. His grandma suspects something foul right away, but she lets him stay anyway because what kills old people faster than any disease is loneliness. Widows (like Mengju) instinctively sense when they aren't needed anymore, and living rapidly loses its purpose.

HTMMBGD rightfully prides itself on being “inspired by true stories found in every family” because it transcends distance, race, and culture. Even if you know nothing about Thailand, its people and traditions, you'll instantly latch onto its portrayal of family dynamics. The movie is filled with heartfelt nuances and sentiments you’ll recognize and cherish because they can potently evoke your own memories.

Mengju is everyone's grandmother: She's wise, faithful, tough yet loving, and she puts her children and grandkids above anything else regardless of how neglectful and ungrateful they are. You'll see that not all of them deserve her love and care equally, but that’s the thing about blood — it never turns into water.

Our grandparents are bottomless wells of affection and wisdom, containing myriads of fascinating stories and invaluable life experiences that no one can teach us as they do. If you’re young or lucky enough to still have them around, don’t let them dry up. Even if you think you can no longer connect with them like you used to when you were a child, try. Make an effort, call or visit them more, ask genuine questions, and watch how their pasts shoot up like a geyser. Because time is a cruel and ruthless thing. When it passes, when it’s gone, it hurts like a wound that’s unable to heal completely. So be kind to it since you won’t ever have anything as precious as the memories it lets you make.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is one of this year’s hidden treasures. A grounded, sincere, and gentle opus on family scars, parental love, and memories that become the emotional bedrocks of our lives. It’s a movie that doesn’t wield sentimentality and melancholy as a weapon but lets them run through us smoothly without asking how we feel. We’ll know. And, in the end, we’ll thank writer-director Boonnitipat for reminding us of what truly matters in life — through a heart-breaking yet uplifting tale about a clueless boy and his loving grandmother.

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The next few weeks will be quite chaotic since I’m moving to a different country. I’ll do my best to keep up with my usual publishing schedule (Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday), but if I can’t, this is why.