I gave him 300 pages of images and research and the script. The apex of “Hamnet” is being in touch with nature. All your other films are about nature in many ways. But this one was psychedelic almost.
The Role of Time on Set
ZHAO: I think both of our films are pretty good to watch on psychedelics. SAFDIE: Oh, really? I can’t. My relationship with drugs is such a bad one.
When I would smoke weed a while ago, it was a self-punishing experience. I would do it to inspect all of the things that I hated about myself and then put them in a category to study.
ZHAO: your inner dialogue with all your shadows. But what I love about your films is that, like Shakespeare’s plays, they’re not afraid of the shadows. It’s hard for me to get my characters to the places you get your characters to, storywise. SAFDIE: What do you mean by that?
The Art of Holding Tension and Embracing Mystery
ZHAO: The situations they’re in; allowing their shadows to come up. And to let these compulsions grab them completely, and then they do things that are almost unthinkable and sometimes unforgivable. And yet, still give them humanity.
That’s what a lot of characters in Shakespeare’s plays are like. He was swimming with his shadows nightly.
SAFDIE: Your films feel very free. ZHAO: I find that being on set, working with the actors, trying to go, “Can you hold the tension between knowing and not knowing? Because I need you to have a container for the character, but I also need you to let go to the mystery.” SAFDIE: You’re having that exact conversation with them?
The Power of Actors’ Transcendence
ZHAO: Well, I asked them at the beginning, I said, “Hold it.” That means coming in, having some intention, but not knowing where the scene’s going to go; they don’t practice where it’s heading, so we’ll just see how it goes. If I come in every day knowing what’s going to happen, then is just mine, and that’s pretty small. There’s something so much bigger.
SAFDIE: Time is kind of a container in general. ZHAO: For sure. SAFDIE: There are a few things that exist outside of time.
Love exists outside of time. I remember Einstein once tried to explain relativity to somebody and said, “Everyone knows that an hour with your hand on a stove is an eternity. An hour with the person you love is over in a second.” And I’m pretty sure Einstein said that in kind of layman’s terms to try to explain relativity.
ZHAO: It’s also the energy of the people there.
There was a synchronization. There’s an energy that builds, builds, builds, and it comes through on-screen. We worked with this amazing woman, Kim Gillingham; she’s a dreamwork coach who comes from a Jungian tradition.
So before I even wrote the script, Jessie and I were doing dreamwork together. Our dreams had already started mingling.
ZHAO: By the time we got to the Globe, the cast and crew all went through dreamwork. She would be on the stage, and she would drop 300 people into a somatic meditation. SAFDIE: Everyone went through them? ZHAO: Oh, yeah.
They’re all in a collective dream. There’s something about harmonizing the vibration of people, because we are made of vibrating particles from the universe.
ZHAO: Once they vibrated at the same pace, it’s incredible how little I needed to do, because then they’re moving as one organism. SAFDIE: I saw your film in the theater, and I could feel the energy around me during that final scene. There were some older women who were completely hysterical, inconsolable, to the point where I’m like, “Oh no!” But it added to the moment.
ZHAO: It speaks to the power of a theatrical experience.
I’ve seen some of my favorite films on my 10-inch television at the foot of my bed, but then you go and revisit them when they’re in theaters, and all of a sudden you’re feeling some sort of collective energy. Time doesn’t exist anymore.
