Chloé Zhao Has Looked Into the Void

How did this book make its way to you?

I was driving through New Mexico to the Telluride Film Festival, and that’s when Amblin [Steven Spielberg’s production company] called me about this project. The reception was in and out, and they were saying that it’s about Shakespeare’s wife and the death of their son. I just thought, There are so many things in that sentence that I have no personal connection to, so I said no. Then, a few hours later, I met Paul Mescal for the first time [at Telluride]. I didn’t know who he was, because I had not seen “Normal People”—his career changed a lot in a short amount of time. But I sat next to the creek with him, and I just felt something about him. There’s a simmering discomfort in him, like an animal, like a steppenwolf, that just wants to burst out. That’s why he creates. I asked him, “Would you ever consider playing young Shakespeare?” And he said, “Wait, are you talking about ‘Hamnet’? I loved the book so much! You have to read the book.”

What about the book, when you read it, made you feel like you were the right person to do the film?

I still wasn’t sure if I was right. Only lately have I thought, I guess I was the right person. You just don’t know. You have to look for signs that are saying, “Yes, you are,” and these synchronicities, these signs, are where I create from. It’s O.K. to have that doubt. When I read the book, I thought the internal landscape was so beautifully described. Usually I have to really get to know, say, Brady [Jandreau] from “The Rider,” for such a long period of time to understand his internal landscape, so that then I can externalize it onscreen. But Maggie had already done that work for all of the characters. I thought, That’s my blueprint. And there’s a rhythm to the way she writes. It has a heartbeat to it—very similar to me. I found out later that her favorite filmmaker is Wong Kar-wai, whose work made me want to make films many years ago.

The external landscape in the film is so vivid. Your first three features are shot in the American West, while much of “Hamnet” takes place in a forest. You shot in Wales and Herefordshire. Can you tell me about finding those locations and what resonated with you about this very different natural landscape?

The natural world has been a big part of every film I’ve done, and I can now, in my forties, look back and say the reason is because I have always had a deep fear of death, and that drives my creativity. When you are afraid to die, you are not able to live fully. I know that deep inside. At night, when the light goes off, I lie there—I know I am not living my life fully, because I’m so terrified. I don’t feel safe in this world. When you go into nature, you develop a very embodied spirituality that is not reliant on anyone else. It’s a safety that you feel when you become one with your surroundings. All of our great prophets go into nature to come back with a message. So that’s part of working on my own shit.

In my thirties, I was much more like a pioneer: going west, finding treasures. I wanted to go as wide as possible, chasing horizon after horizon. The camera’s insatiable. It wants to capture everything. I was always on the move. Then, in my forties, after a midlife crisis, I realized that I can’t keep running from myself. And the forest is the opposite of the plains. The forest is deeply feminine. It makes you stay still, and when you stay still you have nowhere to go but into the underworld—and into yourself, where all your shadows are.

When I first visited the forest in Wales with my cinematographer, Łukasz [Żal], we wanted to find a language for the film, or just let the forest tell us what the film is about, beyond what we read in the book. I was in Kyiv right before that, with someone who was making a documentary about a strip of forest on the front line. When I left Kyiv and went to Wales, and it was this beautiful spring forest that we were in, I was getting some footage from the front line in Ukraine, and I would see these dark, black holes in the ground, and sometimes they’re land mines. And then I would walk around our forest in Wales and see these natural-made black holes. I had such a big emotional reaction to it. I started crying. I sat next to this black void, because it’s coming for all of us. No matter how unimaginable what is happening in the world, there is the bittersweetness of the great equalizer in the end. In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare wrote, “All that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity.” To me, that eternity is love. So, then Łukasz runs over and goes, “I understand this! We must film this hole!” I was, like, Ah, this is what the film is about. We consider nature a department head. It’s constantly working with us.