Academy Award-winning director Chloe Zhao breaks down a scene from her film 'Hamnet' where the Shakespeares, played by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, mourn the death of their son. Get the details as they analyze the devastatingly emotional scene.
Director: Claire Buss Director of Photography: Dave Sanders Editor: Paul Tael Talent: Chloe Zhao, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal Producer: Madison Coffey Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza Camera Operator: Nigel Akam Gaffer: Dave Plank Audio Engineer: Kevin Teixeira Production Assistant: Nicole Murphy Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Assistant Editor: Andy Morell Senior Manager; Creative Development: Hannah Pak Director; Creative Development: Claire Buss Director; Content Production: Lane Williamson Senior Director; Programming & Development: Ella Ruffel Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin
00:00Can we go frame by frame on Jessie's face as she winds up?
00:10Hi, I'm Jessie Buckley.
00:11I'm Chloe Zhao.
00:12I'm Paul Maskell.
00:13And this is Notes on a Scene.
00:27Have a sandwired onions.
00:29And sandwired.
00:31To whom?
00:32To you.
00:34This is after Hamnet died. Spoiler alert.
00:38And Agnes is in her full expression of her grief, which is very different than how Will expresses his grief.
00:44He couldn't really handle the weight of it, so he decided to leave very soon after Hamnet died.
00:50What I learned was that I shall sandwired when I reach London.
00:53London?
00:56I must leave.
00:59We can take this opportunity, someone's peeling eggs, to talk about the beautiful production design Fiona, our production designer, has done.
01:06For her, it was really important that the space, the house, can contain the story of a full range of human emotions a person can go through.
01:16So there's emptiness, joy and grief.
01:18It's so much about what plays on the table.
01:21I don't think it was in the scene written in that I was peeling eggs.
01:26And while we were shooting, I would send Chloe these, like, fever writings every night, which were kind of abstract writings around the scene.
01:35And a load of eggs.
01:38Peeling, peeling eggs came into my mind.
01:42And those are all the eggs.
01:43But now I have this, like, book of this moment in my life that I wasn't even kind of aware what I was making at the time.
01:50But now I have a full kind of memory book of this time.
01:54And then, you know, just to shout out, like, that beam is like an old beam that were shipped from France.
02:02It was so important for the team to have everything feels extremely lived in and every little piece of details is there purposefully.
02:10Fiona's design was so amazing.
02:12It had a smell that you felt like you were entering into a world.
02:17And even the, like, room where Hamnet dies, it smelled like an underworld in some way.
02:24And every tiny detail, like the candle holders were really, like, made out of this amazing corrugated iron that she bought in Italy by a man who was making candle holders the same way as they did back in the 1500s.
02:39And you felt like, as an actor, you could go to any corner of the set and you could interact with it.
02:44Yeah.
02:45Like, it felt practical, I think, that sometimes for actors, a difficult thing when you're confronted with artifice.
02:50If you go over to a place that you're not supposed to go and then suddenly the whole illusion crumbles.
02:55I have to go now.
02:58Now?
03:00There's a traveling party leaving today and they have a spare horse.
03:03So, yeah.
03:04Look after the girls and I will return.
03:09So.
03:10Okay, I'm pausing.
03:11Can we go frame by frame on Jessie's face as she winds up?
03:14No, no, no, no, no, no.
03:15So, so...
03:16Oh my God.
03:17I didn't... I see.
03:18Look...
03:19You know, this is everyone's reaction behind the monitor.
03:24I mean, it's quite a shock if somebody takes a swing at somebody.
03:27I think that's the only take you did do a swing.
03:29Yeah, I didn't do it again.
03:30But also me and Lucas should look at it like, this is the one.
03:33I thought you hated the take.
03:34I thought you hated it.
03:35Me too.
03:36Well, I was in a like, I hate life mode that day.
03:40As you know, the idea of in moments like this, when the emotions are so charged, the camera
03:46will restrain itself from pushing for emotions.
03:50Because the space is like a bomb about to explode.
03:53Yeah.
03:54And we actually want to stand back.
03:56Because we want the audience to feel the impact of the shock wave.
04:02Because when you go in there for some reason, it actually does the opposite.
04:06So we stayed wide, but what we didn't...
04:08It also feels theatrical.
04:09Like it feels like in the world of Shakespeare that like you're watching, like kind of in
04:13a meta sense, like you're watching actors in a frame that like you're not...
04:16Not that you don't see wide shots in films, but I feel like some of the more emotionally charged
04:21moments that you would see people jump in on in different films.
04:25You don't.
04:26Yeah, exactly.
04:27And also the unpredictability, because the camera isn't there.
04:31They have all this space and the wild animals come out of them.
04:36And that's what happened here.
04:37Let's look at frame by frame of her expression.
04:39That's how close it is.
04:41I felt it across my face.
04:42I was so thrilled when that happened.
04:44Like, just like...
04:45I didn't...
04:46Nobody...
04:47Firstly, nobody knew that that was going to happen at all.
04:50It wasn't scripted.
04:51It wasn't...
04:52I didn't even know what was going to happen.
04:54And you get a shock when these...
04:55Yeah.
04:56When these things come up.
04:57Yeah.
04:58But the fact that you dodged that.
04:59Well, I just think it means that we were very much in our bodies, like...
05:02Yeah.
05:03Makes me scared watching it now.
05:04Go.
05:05Đ”ŃĐ° dire hospitals.
05:07No!
05:08No!
05:09Ah!
05:10Mmm!
05:11No!
05:12No!
05:13Oh!
05:14No!
05:15No!
05:16skills!
05:17No!
05:18No!
05:19Ah!
05:20No!
05:21Oh!
05:22Oh!
05:23Ah!
05:24Oh, ë.
05:25I love my love.
05:27On the day, I think all of us have come into this with our own heart- it, and you, youĆ
05:34with our own you know really intense ones and and that does reflects into the
05:39story and I was definitely going through a really intense heart heartache right
05:43around the time we're shooting this that mirrored exactly what's happening in
05:47this scene so I was not really together that day but at the same time the
05:52emotions I was feeling I think was we were all linked together we didn't do
05:56much rehearsal but we did some physical rehearsal and we used this scene because
06:01we knew this was gonna be a big physical scene and so we did a a tantric
06:05polarity workshop because I've trained as a tantric practitioner and and what it
06:09does is do you wanna a good scene has to have polarity even if it's people just
06:17looking at nothing happens there needs to be polarizing energy happening for any
06:21kind of chemistry that's just physics so I wanted Paul and Jesse to feel safe to be
06:28in their most extreme polarity of their gender so the most extreme of masculine
06:34and the most extreme of feminine and that is actually really beautiful it happens
06:38in nature a lot so you have the masculine being the container and the banks on a
06:44river and then the feminine full expression all chaos all emotions no
06:51feeling is restrained full expression anything she feels grief shame pain
06:58whatever it is is supposed to really make him come alive turn him off the more he
07:04contains unconditionally holding that presence the more she has the
07:09permission to surrender even more to her emotions it's too much so it's so hurts my
07:23heart yes but I'm so happy I love it oh keep your heart open that's a good hair there was a
07:34moment then she relaxes and then the there's a beautiful kind of surrender
07:40from her and that allows him to also soften and then nobody is has any kind of
07:47pretense and they're both are in their most vulnerable state and we planted the
07:52seed that day so even though on this day I wasn't really functional but I I was so
07:59happy to see that you went there
08:07go I think we all know fathers sons grandfathers friends uncles lovers men
08:22who come who are in pain they can't express themselves they're so afraid of
08:27their feeling functions and he's not running away from her he's running away
08:33from himself yeah she realized that in the end so and the only place he feels
08:37safe to express himself his creativity is through his his art and just quickly on
08:42the costume is also you know you when we first meet the two of them their colors
08:46even though different but really beautiful together vibrant vibrant together and
08:51she you know my gosh is there has our costume designer has a lot of details
08:55because not only Agnes is not fully dressed and she also like there's all these little stitches
09:01that are down almost like absently onto the it's actually coming apart while he is wearing more layers
09:07there's a more of a dissonance between them and oh this thing breaks my heart I
09:11think that's that's the eternal struggle and the masking to run from themselves
09:15because they can't feel they're too afraid to feel and then for the feminine to then have to what do you mean by that too afraid to feel
09:22I know you know I don't think like to express it openly in front of people
09:28I don't think you know life doesn't imitate art you two are nothing like these two people
09:32also what was amazing is like there was an on everybody was in their unspoken imaginations
09:42and that's also because of the world that Fiona and Malgoja created once we entered into that house
09:47and entered into that scene we were already cooking like we were already in the scene
09:52and we all just got about being in it as much as we could and didn't ask kind of permission for anything
10:01but we did that I feel like in the weeks that preceded the shoot like we did it in the in the workshop
10:05yeah we didn't go say the the thing about the workshop of the male sexual organ well here's
10:11I'll just say you use it or not to build the polarity he's job is to embody a physically embody a penis
10:20and her job is to physically embody a vagina yeah and they and they was making movements and making
10:28sound to embody those two things and then forever just looking at each other until one of the lowest moments
10:34much less of my career I would say embodying a penis just leave that to everybody's imagination
10:42lots of rigidity on that now it's no time to see no but but truly like I didn't know who these characters were
10:52I had Maggie's book I had this idea archetypally who they were so very much that these two other than being
11:00brilliant actors but they were also so open and and brave to give themselves in into these characters
11:08so they who they are sort of melted with who these characters are and so a moment like this for a
11:14director is you know for me it's just such a treat because this is why I come to work for moments like
11:19that to happen half of that is well Agnes the other half is Paul and Jesse
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