A conversation with Chloé Zhao by Daniel Kothenschulte

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Daniel Kothenschulte: I’m still completely enchanted by this film, it’s almost like an American song, like a Gershwin song or like Paul Simon’s “Bridge over the Water”, you want to hear it again and again because it captures something essential in a very unique way.

Chloé Zhao: That’s a big compliment.

Daniel Kothenschulte: You’ve heard that many times before, I think. it’s easy to call that simple, but it’s a kind of simplicity that is so perfect that it probably made a lot of work to do, to accomplish. Starting with the first act, that’s so condensed in the way the love story is told and still nothing’s missing. So I wonder if that always was the case when you develop the film because you don’t waste much time to bring this couple together.

Chloe Zhao: There was more on the page, not a lot more. I think in Maggie’s book it was pretty immediate that these two people right away felt, ah, we found someone that can complete us, you know, that kind of initial feeling. And the challenge would be to convince the audience that it is that magnetic, right? So that’s where the language comes in. Sometimes less is more, meaning you don’t question it. If you do more sometimes, then you’re letting, you’re giving chances for people to pull it apart.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Is it necessary that this begins with the casting, that the actors really have some chemistry between them?

Chloé Zhao: Absolutely. So we did a chemistry test between Paul and Jessie and we knew just having them in the room together, not just about performing the script, but there’s a natural chemistry and there are undiscovered spaces around them. And they’re both willing to dance and to discover. With that willingness, at least we have a chance.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Since this first act is a love story, I wonder what you think about this genre in general because love is a conception that’s so different in various cultures, you know. And for example, the romantic idea of love, which might have been inspired by Romeo and Juliet, but was actually something that the 19th century really focused on, at least from the European standpoint, whereas maybe in other cultures it might be older or younger or maybe not even identical. So I wonder how you feel about telling a love story? Is this universal or is it specific to a certain milieu or country or culture?

Chloé Zhao: What I’ve learned in making my films is the more specific you get, the more universal it becomes. But for me, the specificity isn’t cultural, it is individual. So I can only tell a love story from the love I know. And I can only pull from that experience. So to me, love is not about happiness. I’m only at times happy in love. But to me, love is about transformation. That you bring the best out of each other, but you also bring the most wounded, the most painful part of each other out, so it has a chance to be healed.

Interview: So when you bring that painful part out, that’s the greatest danger, to get hurt again, because it’s all there for the other person to hurt.

Chloe Zhao: Of course. And yes, I don’t think you can love with an open heart without the capacity of handling the pain from being hurt and from losing that love.

Daniel Kothenschulte: So this is how the story continues. There’s this big pain, and how will love survive that pain? There have been many films about couples losing a child, and then a big crisis occurs. And this film is about to tell the same story, but then it finds another way. Like in many ways, I think the film avoids cliches of usual storytelling. So, well, what is the question? Is this also something that draws on your own experience?

Chloé Zhao: Yes. I don’t have children, so I can’t talk about what it’s like losing a child, but when a couple, when two lovers experience something in life, it doesn’t have to be one situation. It could be a series of events or time. What they loved about each other, which is something they don’t have, that they see in someone else, with the other person, they complete each other, becomes the greatest obstacle as well, because how different they are They can’t see from the other person’s perspective, and they can’t comprehend how can this person leave, or how can this person not see what I’m going through? How can this person not communicate something? Just everything about this person suddenly becomes inaccessible. And you go, where is this person that I met at the beginning? It’s still the same person. It’s just your projection of that person now is back onto yourself.

And that’s an extremely painful process to happen to a relationship. And usually at that point, there is a crossroad. You either separate and go find someone else to project yourself onto, so you can find another way to complete yourself, or you have to do the work of going down to the underworld, and retrieve the part of yourself that you have projected onto someone else, and to hopefully find some inner completion. So that way, you can look at this person, you can see this person as who they are, as opposed to who you want them to be, which is what happened to these characters, in this case, through an experience in a story inside of a theatre. And that’s the ultimate surrender in love, I think, is that you surrender all your projections, you surrender who you think this person should be, or you even surrender your own ideal of what a human being should act in certain situations, and try to see the other person for who they are.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Yet this person expresses his love in other forms, since he’s William Shakespeare. So he’s the person to express his emotions in the most unique and universal way, just the same as his wife doesn’t know of his work. So it comes as a surprise, is that do you really think that she didn’t have an idea of how he would emotionally work as an artist?

Chloé Zhao: He didn’t do it because he’s William Shakespeare. He expressed his emotions that way because he had no choice. Because he was raised in a household where expressions of emotions are not only not mirrored, but are punished, and it’s not safe. So he suppressed his emotions his entire life. And the only safe place for him to express that is through his work, is in the fantasy.

And so out of survival, he became William Shakespeare. And I know that, I think most of my peers, I can see, and myself included, I can see that’s the origin story, right? It wasn’t that they had some specialness that made them who they are It was come out of needing to make sense of why I’m feeling this way, and when it’s unable to be expressed, which if you can’t let go, let out that scream, that guttural scream. If you can’t let the trauma out of your body, you gotta have to, you know, alchemise in some other ways. And creativity is that. So she doesn’t understand his way of alchemising grief. He can’t be near hers because it’s too much, right? So they had to go grieve differently, apart.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Speaking of too much, this cry of hers, which is, you know, it gets through your hearts and through your bones. That was not staged. That was a surprise to you as well.

Chloé Zhao: It was a surprise to Jessie. And it didn’t happen right away. It happened a few takes in. And that’s, you know, when I watch it in the theatre, even having seen it for so long, being one of the editors on the film, I still feel the discomfort towards the end of the scene when the voice drops out. And you feel that in the theatre from people. And I do believe the screen transmutes a bit of energy. And so I think about it a lot of our responsibilities as storytellers that we’re transmuting energy to people around the world.

And I try to think about being very careful not to allow my own projection, unhealthy projection onto the screen, because then I’m spreading my own unconscious into the world. So my only guidance in moments like this is what happens out of my control, but in the present moment. Something happened in the present moment that isn’t Jesse’s idea or control, isn’t mine. It showed up. When that happened, I know that it wasn’t my decision. And it’s something bigger than us. Then I can stand by it. And I don’t believe, I think human beings have very, very small, beautiful, but very small vision of anything.

You know, we have a tiny brain and a very, very narrow perspective in terms of the grand scheme of things. And as an artist, if that’s all I’m creating from, then I worry it’s going to be too limited. And especially, again, in moments like this, how can I know what grief looks like for that person at that time?

Daniel Kothenschulte: Especially when somebody dies in your family, this is usually something that you’re not prepared for.

Chloe Zaho: No, even if you have done research, talk to a hundred women who go through that.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Yes. You don’t know what it’s like for that person in that moment, right? And so where does the reference come from?

Chloé Zhao: For me, the only thing I can trust is what happens in the moment.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Yet in Shakespeare’s time, every third boy died of the plague. So it was very common.

Chloe Zhao: But fortunately, you don’t show it as something very common. You show it as something very hopefully uncommon. I don’t think even if it’s common, I don’t think the pain is any less. But I think the narratives we attach to the pain, the suffering part is a bit different. In the sense that, like you said, because it happens more often, it’s seen as a bit more of a natural process. As opposed to now, I think death in general has some shame or some control around it that makes the reality of it even harder to deal with because of the story we attach to it, even though it’s a very natural part of the human existence.

Daniel Kothenschulte: I’m sure you were asked to make this film because of your personal films before. But is it difficult to make such a personal film right now in America? For example, there’s even a sex scene. I don’t see sex scenes anymore.

Chloe Zhao: Hey, that’s a big problem.

Daniel Kothenschulte: Can you explain about that?

Chloé Zhao: I’m a student of Carl Jung. And as a Jungian, we believe that the shadows, the shadows within ourselves and in the collective unconscious, and that those shadows are parts of ourselves that we are most afraid of and ashamed of, even also our greatest desires. And if you think about modern civilisation, going back to tens of thousands of years, in order to control us, some of these most foundational human experiences were taken from our own autonomy, death, our ability to die naturally, for the body to lead the dying process, to birth, how we give birth, the experience of giving birth, and our bodies, the wisdom from our bodies, almost non-existing, we think from our minds, which includes sexuality. That’s another huge shadow that’s being controlled.

And so when those things are, that we don’t feel safe in the fullest expression, then a big part of ourselves is missing. And so we need to buy things. We need to believe in someone else’s method, so we can have a connection with the divine. And these are all very sad things that happened to us, that we were born with the birthrights to these experiences. So that’s why in storytelling, which is a huge part of myth-making, and also like mirrors for us to see ourselves in, death is heavily controlled, sexuality is heavily controlled.

Daniel Kothenschulte: The shadow, which is an ongoing metaphor in the film, is most prominently featured in the shadow play scene. I love that, because this is, of course, it’s early cinema, it’s early animation, but it’s also most prominently known from Asian cultures.

Chloé Zhao: So that I’ve found a way to make this a more general, maybe even Chinese, story I tried, even at the end credits for “Eternals”, I had a shadow puppet play. And then in Eternals, I call Kingo, we call this the shadow warrior, because I think what’s really great about being a storyteller is that we play with shadows, that’s how it started. It’s about the shadows you see in the cave, right? It’s like what is real, what isn’t, dreams and our unconscious. The kind of mystery part of storytelling, just same as death and sexuality, has been not just the content, but how we do it, are not told in school.

Daniel Kothenschulte: There are two other scenes that I find similar, important. One is the storytelling in the forest, like the telling of the story, and the other one is the rehearsal on the stage. So these are, in my opinion, two other tributes to storytelling and to maybe also to filmmaking. The way that Shakespeare is shown teaching the actors how to act out of his own grief and everything else, but somehow it seems to support the idea that it was a collective effort, Shakespeare’s play. There’s a theory that there was even more than one Shakespeare, it was a collective work. And maybe the fact that we have the plays is because the actors memorised them, they were written down from the surviving actors’ memories. So maybe this is something that you wanted to express also, that there’s more than one genius involved in producing.

Chloé Zhao: Not only more than one genius, I think every one of us has the capacity to work like William Shakespeare. And again, back to what we were talking earlier, that our creativity, our ability to create, is taken from us when we’re told only certain people with certain conditions has the to the spirit, to the divine. And the rest of us have to buy a ticket or have to join a club somewhere in order to have that access.

And so I don’t believe stories came from us, I believe stories existed past, present, and future, they’re out there. And when a person is experiencing something in life, and they’re transforming, they’re changing, and they are who they are in that moment, they become the conduit to that story. You can answer the call or not, but it comes into your life in a way that it feels like fate. And I try to run my set in that way. I try to think about going forward, discovering these older tools of storytelling that we do naturally, that we do it from like breathing, you know, like dance, like moving our body, like creating from a somatic place by recording our dreams. You know, just there are so many, I work with our sexual energy, there’s so many things that are lost in the language of creativity that were kept, you know, the tools in mysticism, in mystery schools were kept for the elites, the ruling power. It was taken from everyday people that used to be our ancestors, used to everyone had rituals to have that connection with the divine, to receive stories, everybody did. You know, the shamans were facilitators, they weren’t leaders or preachers. So I’m very passionate about rewriting that dynamic.

Daniel Kothenschulte: I believe that. I’m so sorry that your work is not shown in China, is this something that hurts you?

Chloé Zhao: I would love it if it happens.

Daniel Kothenschulte: So much. Thanks very much. Bye.