Interview with Chloé Zhao

Photo from the New York Times

I recently saw the wrenchingly beautiful film, “Hamnet.” I could go on and on about the movie itself but what more recently captivated me was this interview with the director, Chloé Zhao. The topics range but some themes she touches on feel so essential for the collective these days.

Specifically, she talks about her fear of death and how she is confronting this in unique ways both personally and professionally. I am not surprised that after a pandemic, there is a need for art that fearlessly reflects our grief. Death has become so taboo and sanitized in our culture and this leaves those dealing with grief and death (which will be all of us) feeling cut off and cast out, taboo by association.

Of course we have all had countless conversations over the last couple of years about how wild those pandemic times were. But most interesting to me in these talks, is the quiet bewilderment that the world just slipped back into life, no collective processing, no pause, no ceremony. Our rapid flight from it all leaves us detached individually and fragmented culturally. This incomplete processing is more destabilizing than we want to admit.

The movie (based off the book of the same name), does take place during the bubonic plague and so there is an obvious parallel here. But I think the true resonance is the demand the film makes of the audience to bear witness to the visceral grief of the characters. Given the way the audience sat and lingered well into the credits before getting up, it is clear that this demand at this moment feels like a much needed exhale.

Chloé wisely notes in the interview, that much of life takes place in the compost- in death, collapse, break down- this is a natural state. Her personal confrontation of this truth ripples into an invitation for those of us watching and listening. Stay seated, don’t turn away, it might be the very thing you need.