'The Interview': Chloé Zhao Is Yearning to Know How to Love

Hi, I'm Solana Pine, I'm the director of video at the New York Times. For years, my team has made videos that bring you closer to big news moments. Videos by Times journalists that have the expertise to help you understand what's going on. Now, we're bringing those videos to you in the Watch tab in the New York Times app. It's a dedicated video feed where you know you can trust what you're seeing. All the videos there are free for anyone to watch, you don't have to be a subscriber. Download the New York Times app to start watching. From the New York Times, this is the interview, I'm David Marquesi. Chloe Zhao is an anomaly. At only 43, with just five feature films under her belt, she's already established herself as one of cinema's most distinctive and distinguished directors. And she's done it at a time when the movie business is increasingly averse to artistic risk and originality. Quality's on display in all her work. She started with independent film, including the sparsely poetic Neo-Western Nomad Land, which won Academy Awards for Best Picture and for Zhao Best Director. She then tried her hand at an ambitious mega-budget Marvel movie, "Eternals." And her latest is last fall's heart-wrenching drama, "HamNet," an adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's historical novel about the death of Shakespeare's young son from the plague and the grief his parents experienced after. It won two Golden Globes and is up for several Academy Awards, including Best Director. So how has she done it? Because as I learned firsthand, Zhao is an enigmatic, even somewhat mystical presence in person. Not exactly the sort of hotshot personality we often associate with big-time Hollywood directors. But as it turns out, Zhao isn't much interested in simple or straightforward answers. Here's my conversation with Chloe Zhao. Chloe, thank you for taking the time to come speak with us today. Thank you for having me. I want to start with an award-season question. Your eyes just glazed over a little, sorry. No, it's excitement. Yeah, that was a look of excitement. Like an animal in the jungle. There's obviously a lot of award-season buzz around HamNet. And by the time this interview comes out, we'll know what nominations the film did or didn't get. But right now, the thing that I'm curious about is sort of what like the whole awards rigour moral stirs up for you. Because I imagine it could involve feelings like envy or competition or it involves salesmanship or glad-handing, which I feel like are not necessarily the kinds of feelings or ideas that are interesting to you or come naturally to you. So how do you deal with this moment? I love that that's almost like a form of compliment you just did. You think of me a lot more highly than maybe you like doing, I don't know. But I think the all those quite basic emotions, none of us can escape it, right? And especially artists, so many of us, majority of us started telling stories because we didn't have the easiest childhood. So when you work, right, which is the only way that you can see connection and validation since your little child is being compared and judged, you could go as far as feeling a rejection of that is a rejection of who you are and what your ability to belong to a tribe or be safe or be loved. You could go that far and it does go that far to me at times. But what I like about it. I don't know if people know is that filmmaking is quite of a lonely process, at least speaking as director. You're like a Ronan, you know, you're like a samurai. Wondering Samaritan. Yeah, you're getting higher to do jobs and jobs and jobs. And then you create this family and then you have to leave again. So a worse season, especially if someone like me who came up from independent films and having to go festivals and labs after labs to even get money to grants and to make my first film, I was exposed to a lot of my fellow filmmakers over a decade ago. So to be paid, to be brought together and to see each other and to hang out at these, you know, events and round tables and something is actually really nice. I try to ask them to let me come to their set and just shadow people. I think there should be a system where directors get to be on each other set. Otherwise, how do we keep learning? What do you think someone could learn from watching you work? How to embrace chaos. I mean, pretty much Hamlet was created that way. For example, when Hamlet died, spoiler alert or alert, don't think you can spoil this one. It's a historical fact. Someone died. Someone wrote a play. Hamlet died and on that day, Jessie and I would not talk about. We don't really talk about the scene coming in. In the morning, she would do a lot of fever writing about her dreams and then she would pick some music. And so as soon as I get to set up, I will just put the music on repeat. People said sort of get harmonized to the vibration she wants to be vibrating in. And other than a conversation about which set up we want to do, we just go in there and do it. And so when she light out that very natural scream of grief, that was now something that was planned from me nor her. I do believe it didn't just come from her, it came from the collective, the village. And when that happens, I can feel it. And it's the most exciting thing for me as a director because I go, there's no way any of us could have thought of that. And because that is truth happened in the moment. And I will bottle that up and I will defend it in the edit. And I will make sure it goes into the world. You know, it's so interesting to hear you talk about the practicalities of directing for you. Because you know, often when I've heard other directors talk or read about other directors, there's recurring images or tropes of how a director behaves that are. You know, it's like I want to say France, it's France is for Coppola who said this, I could be wrong, but he compared being a director to like being a ringmaster of a circus that's inventing itself every day. Or sometimes you hear directors compared with generals or something like that. And these are all sort of very to my mind kind of like alpha aggressive macho metaphors for the job of directing on the day. But it's so not what you're describing. And I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you handle the necessary leadership aspects of being a director and making a movie. You know, I like, I like thinking about myth. If you think about in myth and in archetypes, what are the types that can lead? Traditionally, yes, you have a general, but you also have a priestess. Both can evoke the desire for people to get excited to follow their vision. It doesn't mean that the example you give of what France just said that he's that and I'm this. Both of these two archetypes within ourselves. So there is a general inside of me, but there's also a priestess inside of me. It just depends on the scene, it depends on the film. And some filmmakers have a bit more priestess energy in them than general, but both can lead. And both are needed. If you only have the priestess, it's total chaos. Black hole. If you only have the general, it's total order and just one beam of light and nothing else. But I like to be in those two extreme polarities. I suppose so constantly kind of have my hands and everything controlling everything, but also now fully controlling everything. No, I like to be total surrender and then total control. I have kind of a historically inclined question for you. So in Shakespeare's time, the time period in which Hamlet is set, the death of a child was a much more common occurrence than it is now. At least in rich Western countries. And I assume that as a result of that, people just had a different perspective on what it meant to lose a child or different feelings or expectations. And I'm just curious how you thought about that with your film. And if you think it's possible to recreate older emotional perspectives. That's a really good question. I think about that all the time. Maggie said that she doesn't believe it's possible that the grief is any less. Maggie O'Farell, the author. Yeah, she said that to me from the start. And I tend to agree with her because even though things are so different, our biology hasn't changed. And the design that we have to want to protect a child would now change. However, the stories we attach to that pain, which is suffering, might be different. Because they also have a different relationship with the young scene back there. Right? You know, I recently trained to be a desk doula. Really? In the UK, let's just finish level one training, foundational training. And then one of the training sessions we had to research indigenous cultures from around the world. How they deal with death and dying both today and also in the past. And you can see that the grief of losing a loved one doesn't change. However, the societal understanding of what death is and what the space it gives to grief and the ceremonies and how it's embedded in the culture has shifted so much. And the medicalization of death, right? And also in the modern world, when death is no longer seen as a natural part of life, because now it's about seeing a life as long as we can. There's almost some kind of shame around death because it's weak or something where it shouldn't happen. So there's so much of that starting being attached to death and dying that actually caused suffering that's not natural to the human condition. So I think that's different. I want to rip up all my questions and ask you more about wanting to be a death doula. We have another session. Why are you interested in becoming a death doula? Because I have been terrified of death my whole life. So I'm so afraid. And because I've been so afraid, I haven't been able to live fully. I haven't been able to love with my heart open because I'm so scared of losing love, which is a form of death. So when you're in your 40s, which is great, by the way, mid-life crisis is the best thing that can happen to you because what it does is you're only your way to a rebirth. You can't run from this feeling. Your body is changing and you can feel death. And I, because I'm so scared of it, I have no choice but to start to develop a healthier relationship with it, or I'm not going to make it. The second half of life will be too hard. So it's a way of facing your fear. It's a way of understanding because making him to help me understand that I just know there is another way. I just have a feeling that whoever designed this have decided that you will be born and then die. You will love deeply, but then lose love. It's almost like a cosmic joke. We're the only one in this nature that have a problem with that process. We must be designed to know how to die. It shouldn't be this terrifying that I can't even live. That must be not the intention. It's not this terrifying to everyone. I hope not, but I just, I do know that a lot of the issues we have in the world comes from ultimately that deep fear of that. Are you afraid of your own non-existence? Are you afraid of the pain of death? I think it's impermanence. You know, the impermanence. So in Hamlet, right? There's a line that goes, all living things must die, passing through nature to eternity. If in your life, eternity doesn't exist, right? Because you didn't grow up with spirituality or religion. So the eternity part is out. You also lost your connection with nature, even your own body, your own body wisdom. Then passing through nature part of that sentence is gone. All you have left is all living things must die. That's no fun. You know, and that's like, wait, well, then it was the point. So you sort of separated from the oneness. But for me, I feel separated often from that oneness. And that illusion of separation makes me afraid to connect. It makes me afraid to create freely or even just live in a way I want to live. You alluded to a midlife crisis. Is that something you're currently experiencing? I'm kind of at the. So if it's four seasons, I'm at the end of winter, beginning of spring. I like I'm coming back up. So actually a better metaphor. I like metaphors, speaking metaphor because it makes more sense to me. In the chrysalis period, I've passed the deepest part of the decomposing from the caterpillar. Let's put it that way, which was extremely uncomfortable for a year and a half of just sitting there having every part of who you used to be granted down. When you tell me what did that look like for you? It looks like getting out of bed is hard. You know, being interested in anything. Just getting through the day because everything that I used to use to distract myself or everything that I thought is what I wanted in life. And everything will be fine if I get them. Or everything that I thought is who I was. No longer is. So I'm sort of at the end of that. And Hamna, by the way, was saved me in many ways to have that film during that time. And you said you struggled to connect with people, struggled to feel love at very sad. You have no struggle. I mean, I have tons of struggles in my life. But when you talk about not feeling or are you talking about having problems with feeling love in relationships with your family, I just want to know more about what. What do you mean about that? If you're terrified of being abandoned, right, cast out a tribe, then you don't make an effort to belong or truly love from a place of vulnerability and trust. And that's really sad because I don't think we're designed to be alone, to do it alone. We're designed as like a whoops, you know, like pack people and try. But to be cast out of your tribe is the most painful thing you can experience or to be abandoned by people that, you know, that you love and that love you doesn't even mean intentionally. Yeah, someday could die. Can I take a stab at something you tell me? Yeah, I can discern. You tell my publicism, come in and soror about it with you, one or the other. You know, when you talk about being cast out of your tribe or I'm discerning. What do you mean? I know what you're going to say. I'm going to ask about family stuff. Oh, okay. Yeah. You grew up in China and then moved to the United States when you were 14. No, actually, I moved to the UK first. Yeah. Was there some sort of familial separation there that's related to the casting out you're talking about? I can't really go into it. But I will answer it the best I can is that it is an investigation. I have been doing the last four years of where sat come from. You know, and I think it's a lot older than I feel like even in this life, I really do. You know, you started by asking me about a worse season, right? It feels like a long time ago. But it's relevant because what is this fear of failing? What is this fear when I, my film, you know, gets rejected by the critics? What is this feeling if the box office is terrible? You know, what if I lose every, you know, what I look around at an awards show, right? And I look at the tables and then when the winners announced and I look at the faces of the people who didn't win, and I try to feel like, what are they feeling? Yeah. And at best it's like that person must had an easier childhood. I worse it's like, I don't belong. They reject me. I might as well just die. Do you think people sitting around the tables at award shows are having that feeling? I think there's a few probably more than that. Because then, you know, what if work is your sense of belonging? You know, what if you feel like you don't belong anywhere but with your family? Then what if your family is gone? Yeah. It makes me realize any kind of belonging has the risk of being cast out. And then you have to ask this, you know, people might roll their eyes when I say this. But that kind of home, the one that cannot be taken away is someone within and is the one that you connect with the divine, with this great mystery that we have different different culture of different word for it. And if you do a uesca ceremony or plant medicine, you feel that that when this and you have no fear in those moments, right? That's what, you know, warriors would take medicine before they go. Have you done ayahuasca ceremonies? No comment. No, I have now done a uesca ceremony. I have experienced facilitated plant medicine healing journeys by my therapist. And I have experienced that kind of oneness that when all the stuff goes away, you really do feel like you're one with everything and truly no fear, you know. And so to answer your question about, did it happen when when I left China to go to school, you know, or did it happen when a film of my didn't work out, or did it happen when. I'm trying to locate the source of the feeling that you're talking about. That is, I tried that for many, many years, because we have to understand why. Right. We must know, because that's how we feel safe. We must understand why this thing happened. But I sort of got to a point where I realized that even the need to understand where it came from is a form of control and is a form of fear. And I let that go a little bit and now it's more about, can I sit in that? And maybe that is the great paradox of what it means to be human. You know, it is to constantly hold the attention of to be or not to be to love or to be abandoned. This is a long way for me to avoid your question, because I think this could be interpreted very simplistically. If I were to try to pinpoint one moment in my life that this made me, and I think we try to look at trauma that way, is that? Because once you pinpoint it, then you can fix it for this not like that. Sorry, I'm not giving you any. That's okay. So just thinking you brought up the to be or not to be out of the stupid thought of my head was like, Oh, that will shake. That's some good idea. That guy, that guy, I have to say, I, I really, I'm the rated. I'm the rated. I used to think, Oh, you know, he just, right. But then I think he is actually like a, like a druid. You know, I think I really do. I think he's tapped into the unseen. Because the symbolism, the archetype that he craves, it's been used in in depth psychology. You know, it's been, it's so mirroring all the great myths are around the world. You go, well, he must be on something or maybe there were, there were mushrooms growing in. I mean, I gotta say some of his plays, you think he must be on something. I didn't say that, by the way, I did not. Shakespeare's not going to have a problem. I just suggest, let him chase your token mushroom. There's the director of him that did not say that. So the question I want to end on for this part of the conversation is, you know, there's this, there was a German sociologist named Max Weber from is like the late 19th century or 20th century. And he had this idea that the modern world has become disenchanted that, you know, because of science and rationality that we've lost a sense of enchantment about the world that people lived in a pre-modern time. It was just their birthright was to have a sense of enchantment about the world. Oh, yeah, or you know, you might, one might have felt that spirits were present or ghosts were present or my, my hunch is that you do experience enchantment. Is that true? And also how might one cultivate a sense of enchantment? Beautiful question, really. I have deep feelings about that question and it is a passion I have now to sort of search for, bring back some tools of cultivating that enchantment for everyone. Everyone should have access to that, not just people who are artists or people who went to school to study, and I do have to play to an Aristotle did great things, but I do have some problems with them as well. I think they talk heartache. I think I feel, right, again, I know very little, I won't claim I know, but my, my instinct makes me feel that there were students of great mystics. And then for whatever reason, they seem to be leaving out of the mystery part out of a lot of their teachings. Instead, they did keep it for themselves, you know, but the bad rock of Western civilization became about rationality and reason as opposed to mystery. And so I feel, because of that, suddenly only certain people have access to the divine, to the unseen, to the end of the world. However, you want to name this realm where great messages comes from, you shouldn't have to pay money to feel you're connected to some kind of bigger thing because a pop star is the only person who has that connection with the divine. Actually, you yourself waking up in the morning has those tools to feel that kind of aliveness and enchantment. So then creativity, imagination, and this access to something beyond became something that only if you have certain skills to learn in a school, do you have access to? And so as a result, there's a spiritual hunger in modern life. We have so much more and yet there's a deep loneliness and so level of hunger and emptiness life have felt in my life and still struggling with. And I think it's because we forgot that we have that ability. Chloe, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really enjoyed it. I did too. Thank you. After the break, I talked to Chloe again and she tells me about the surprising way she coped with uncertainty when she was growing up. I would spend hours and hours and hours and hours, and hours, playing Sims so that I could control these virtual characters. Hi, I'm Juliette. I'm Joel. We're from the Mirror Times games team. And we're here talking to fans about our games. What's your vibe when you're playing one of our games? It makes me feel like I'm procrastinating in a really productive way. It just scratches and itch in my brain if you ever routine. I'm doing long distance with my boyfriend. We'll call every night and share our screen. We do connections, a mini, and then strands, always in that order. Wow. Do you have a favorite, the mini? We try and get it under 30 seconds. We rarely get it under 30, but that's what means the goal. Folks will really time themselves, but with spelling bee, I give myself all day. It is really fun getting queen bee. Yeah, I play when my kids are going to bed. Do you guys play together? My daughter plays, she likes playing wordle. If you ever miss a day, there's also archives. That's so great to know. And you have it for connections as well. Lord, help me. I'm just going to be doing that all day, every day. New York Times game subscribers can now access archives for our most popular games. Find out more at nytimes.com/games. Now, David? Hi, Chloe. I've been looking forward to speaking with you again, so thank you for making the time. Of course. I felt like our first conversation was really the energy kept accumulating. We got deeper and deeper the longer we went, and now it's been a little while since we spoke. It might be a little difficult to get right back into it. Well, when we're on set, if that happens, we take a minute and we drop in physically. How do you drop in physically? Well, okay. So put your hand in front of you like this. Yeah, it doesn't have to lift it all the way up. And then just like, move towards it slowly and stop when you can feel the other hand. Move my hand, close together. Yeah. And just very slowly, and at some point you're going to feel the energy of the other hand. Like there's a ball in there. Do you feel it? Sure. Yeah, exactly. It's right there. Close your eyes. Yeah, and then can you like, light that energy between your hand. Just grow a little bit. You're going to feel that your palm getting warmer, like you're forming a ball. Yeah. And I drag him ball Z, you know, you're about to fire. All right. All right. I think you'll be your eyes. All right. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. We're ready. We're ready. So I just want to ask one more question about your adolescence or your form of yours. Sure. And now I know the director Terence Malik was important for you or is important for you. Yeah. And I have a distinct memory of being 16 years old and seeing Terence Malik's thin red line and then Wes Anderson's Rushmore, maybe within the same week when they came out in the theaters back then. And it was a totally mind-blowing week of movie going for me. Both because I didn't really understand that movies could do what those two movies did. And also because I felt like something about both those two films in different ways, they showed me something that I already understood about myself, but hadn't quite really been able to articulate for myself or seen depicted in a film. And as a result, I think it really both those films I can say kind of changed. In some ways, changed who I was at the time and maybe still now. And I want to know if you have any similar experiences with film where you saw films and then after seeing them understood yourself better. What was it when you said you feel like you made your understand? Well, the thing said you could quite. Yeah. But what was it? With thin red line. There was a. You've seen that movie, right? Yeah, of course. So it's a Terence Malik World War II. The simplest way of describing would be Terence Malik World War II. I think it's one of the greatest war films ever made. But despite being a war film or maybe because of being a war film, the thing that touched me so deeply was that there was a mysticism in that movie and a transcendental feeling about the natural world and a transcendent visual poetry to that film that I hadn't seen in a movie before that, that I just felt connected with so deeply. And then with Rushmore, there was a combination of alienation and open-heartedness that I certainly had been feeling back then. And then again, just to see it represented so beautifully, like I said, felt like it made me understand something about myself. Oh, that's really beautiful. I think it was one carway that's happy together. A beautiful movie. Yeah, and of course Terence Malik's Tree of Life and the New World. But happy together, it was when I was younger. And will you describe your experience? I mean, that is the reason why we have art and storytelling. It's not trying to teach us something that we don't know. It's trying to help us remember who we are to bring us back to the source. So for me, that film made me realize that this deeply uncomfortable tension I feel in my body, this yearning that sometimes feels like it's just going to consume me. It is actually this loneliness, this isolation that film captured. On the other side of it is actually my deep, deep yearning for connection and for relatedness and for love. And that there's nothing wrong with it. And that film is full of mystery, so is the thing right line. And that's why when we're going through our greatest heartbreak and most difficult time, we don't look for facts. We look for poetry because it allows us to stay in the mystery. I have to tell you a quick little anecdote about Tree of Life. That's the one that has the flashbacks to like the time of dinosaurs, right? Yeah. I remember seeing that movie at the Bam theaters in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And there was an older couple sitting beside me who I'm sure bought a ticket for that movie because they thought it was just a Brad Pitt movie. It didn't really understand what they were getting into and they were sort of muttering to each other the whole time. And then there's one scene in that film where like a predator dinosaur puts its foot on the chest of a smaller dinosaur. But then let's the smaller dinosaur go and here's because he was already dying already dying. It's like that dinosaur has shown an act of mercy. It's like a pretty wild wild film. And the lady beside me just says, Morris, what is this movie? Oh, that's such a big moment that's seen for me. Because he is suggesting that grace is the natural state of the universe. And that's what Terry believes in. I've seen that film. I don't know how many times as many times I've seen happy together. Yeah, I have never met him. Never spoken to him. But I'm January 1st this year. I got a phone call from a unknown number. I don't recognize. I thought it was the dog workers I was interviewing. I said, hello. And then I hear this very soft voice and goes, hello, this is Terence. Oh, no. I was thinking Terence, wish Terence. For the first 30 seconds, I was still wondering if it was actually him. I see he's talking about Hamne. Oh, what did he say to you? I can't share that. But. Give me the gist. Because Terence Malik, you know, famously, he doesn't give interviews. He's, I mean, as far as the media is concerned, is it reclusive? Yeah, it was surreal. But I won't share what he said. But I can share with you. This is something that go bad. So it's the same right line. I said to him that I feel that I come from a lineage that is found. Not necessarily. Like, I'm still trying to get back to the lineage of storytellers from my own culture. From the Chinese culture, I'm solely working my way there. But I didn't have access to that. Just life circumstances. You know, I came to the West. And I was, even as a storyteller, wasn't sure what's my lineage. And so his films allowed me to become a part of a lineage. I feel that I come from his lineage, you know, even though he never told me as a student, or he didn't, I didn't give him a choice, I told him. But I did, it is very significant as a storyteller, because you feel like you belong somewhere. It's also a nicer to say I come from his lineage rather than my rip him off with all those shots of wind gently blowing through the natural landscape. That's really funny. You said that. I said, there's a fine line between what I just said, and I've pretty much copied a lot of you. He says, oh no, no, no, no, I have no shame around that. In eternal, the sequence of the creation of the universe was very humbly inspired by the sequence part of life. You will see exact shots. There's something I want you to try and help me understand a little bit more about you. You know, you talk about your desire for connection, but then you also described yourself as someone who has never been able to give love fully. And I wonder, is it that you're able to express that side of you through your work, but not so much in life, like neither your work nor you, seems like they're evidence of someone who has a problem with connection. Oh, you can't judge book by his cover. No. Well, thank you. That's really kind, by the way, but you know, you make the work that you aspire to be, right? And if you see in Hamlet, well, couldn't express his grief, but he could write a play about it and then create such an intimate environment for people to grieve together. But he himself may be hoping through the act of doing that. Maybe himself could grieve and to give him that moment at the end of the film is the grace I'm giving to myself, say, hey, you worked pretty hard too. So maybe hopefully your work can give it back to you. The vulnerability that's required to love fully, to be loved fully. So I can see in your eyes the desire to figure out, like, out of care for me as a human being, to figure out a definition so that we can make things better, you know, like it's in my meaning. I guess what I'm trying to say is, unfortunately, I've learned and I hate that discovery so much. I better resist it every day is that we're just sort of wondering between the two extreme, which is to be able to like really be in the moment and feel and then to love without fear. And then total just like annihilation, just wanted to completely disappear into the end of the world where no one can find me and I start over. And I never have to worry about any of this. I find myself just ping ponging between the two. And I used to think something's wrong with that. But at the end of the meal of crisis, I feel like I came to the conclusion at this moment, that's actually the natural state to be in, which has never been caught how to write this wave. Can I say, you know, I, because I like talking about this kind of stuff, I feel like I have a sense of what you're talking about, but I could also very easily imagine somebody listening to what you're saying and thinking, what the hell is she talking about? Well, okay, fine. The easier version is that the easier version to digest is in nature, everything moves. And that's really scary because we want to hold down to something and listen, I'll give you another fun little adolescence story since that stuff seems to be interesting to people. It's that I was so afraid of change and the cycle and movement and being present to them. I was so obsessed with Sims, playing Sims, so that I would spend hours and hours and hours playing Sims so that I could control these virtual characters. And even within Sims, I couldn't just let things be. I would tab on it so that they would fall in love and they would have this job. I would just control everything with such extreme to regulate myself. Gosh, I played Sims for so long years of my life. I'd like to ask a little more about the work that you're doing as a deaf doula, which you had mentioned before. Training. Training. I have now started doing that work. So you're just learning about it? Yeah, I completed the foundational course. And then the next stage would be the diploma. And then doing that stage I believe I could practice but with a mentor. Have you ever been with someone at the moment of death? Yes. Have you? I have, yeah. Well, I can't tell you in general of what that is because from what I learned in training that every experience is different. But the biggest thing I learned both in that experience and also in the training is that it's a solitary experience. They say, oh, well, that alone, it is true. Even when you're surrounded by loved ones, it's a very internal solitary experience, just like birth as you're going through the birth canal. And when you see that it is a very individual journey, there's a solace to that. You know, it made me realize I don't have to accumulate and try to make life decisions so that I won't die alone because it's so scary to die alone is not true. I know that for a fact, but I'm not telling that to anyone else. You know, everyone has their own journey to get to that. But I do now want to spend my life preparing for my death, you know, I want to live. And if that decision led to me being completely on my own in the moment of death, I know that won't make a difference for me in those last moments that's being surrounded by accomplishment, security, loved ones, it's still going to be an individual experience, my experience. That's also my experience. I was with my mom when she died. And my mom, it was interesting because I was there with a couple other close family members there as well. And my mom wanted us to all be there and knowing the type of person who my mom was, I would have thought that she wanted us to all maybe have our arms around her or something like that. But it was so clear, sorry, it was so clear just in the few moments before it happened that she went somewhere on her own, you know, so I also have witnessed the same sort of thing that you witnessed. Wow. How special it is that you are there to be with her in that moment. Yeah, I mean, I certainly don't see life the same way after that. Of course. Exactly. You learn some things. Exactly. Oh, how do I segue out of that? Let me see if I, oh accomplishment, that's what I was going to talk about. That thing. Earlier, when we spoke, and it was mostly in the context of Hollywood awards and things like that, you know, you touched on things like fear of rejection or wanting validation from peers. And it was interesting for me to hear you talk about those feelings because purely from the outside, you're an Oscar-winning director, seemingly in the prime of her career. And even you have those kinds of difficult feelings that arise from your professional life. And I just wonder, is there any relationship for you between professional success and personal satisfaction? Ideally, ideally, your sense of self-worth is not defined by how many awards you win, or how much money you felt based, ideally, or, you know, what the critics say about yourself, ideally. Ideally. But as we have been talking about the paradox, but I'm trying to learn to be more human, because the reality is, you're going to be sort of dancing between the two, but it's like a wave, right? And then that can happen in one night when you go to a workshop. My goodness. It's like the ups and downs that are going. But imagine if you could go to those things and actually enjoy like a surfer, every part of the wave. And you actually, can you have pleasure in losing and being criticized and failing? I have been investigating that because I refuse, because I know, I know now at 43 years old, 50% of the time is going to be that other side. 50% side is going to be great. The other 50% is going to be shit. And I want to find pleasure, enjoy, and all in the shit too. So I'm working on that. How is it going for you learning to enjoy the shit? I had a lot of shit, you know, in my life, and so I don't call it shit. I call it like the compost, it's the same thing. But you know, it's not something you can just say it. We have to learn the tools. Plenty of people are trying to figure this shit out because plenty of people come to terms with like, okay, half of my life is going to be in the compost. And I don't, I want to learn how to compost. I don't want to numb myself or buy a new bag or take on a job I don't want. You know, or falling in love with somebody like I don't actually love just so that I could avoid the feeling of sitting in the compost with a Christmas. I want to learn how to do it, so I make good life decisions for myself. Chloe, I think I've had to do everything I wanted. Thank you very much for taking all the time to speak with me. I appreciate it. Thank you for being very graceful and open. That's Chloe Zhao. Her movie Hamlet is in theaters now. To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/atsymboltheinterviewpodcast. This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon, mixing by Sonia Herrero, original music by Dan Powell, Leah Shaw Dameron, and Mary Luzano. Photography by Devin Yalkin. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Whiteorm, Paola Newdorf, Andrew Carpinski, Joe Bill Munoz, Amy Marino, and Brooke Mentors. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Next week, Lulu talks with the Jesuit priest, Father James Martin, about his new boss, Pope Leo. Look, his mission is to preach the gospel, and if the gospel has political implications so bad. I'm David Marquesi, and this is the interview from The New York Times. [BLANK_AUDIO]