Rebirth of Chinese Entertainment from the Oscars

In the backstage corridors of the Oscars, the clinking of champagne glasses spilled from the cracks in the doors of the various dressing rooms, creating a muffled yet cheerful background noise. Su Chen leaned against a pillar, having already untied his tie, rolled it up, and put it in his suit pocket. The buttons on his cuffs were also loosened; the one that had been sewn too tightly had finally come undone and now lay quietly in his other pocket. He took a glass of sparkling water from a passing waiter's tray and was about to head towards the dressing room for the "Love" crew when Jason hurried up from the other end of the corridor, holding a freshly printed email, the pages still slightly warm.

"An email from Warner." Jason shoved the paper into Su Chen's hand, speaking much faster than usual. "It's from Richard. They just bought the priority rights to a script from an independent producer and want our Light & Shadow Era to co-produce it. The script is called 'Manchester by the Sea'."

Su Chen took the email but didn't read it immediately. He placed his sparkling water on the windowsill and, under the dim light of the corridor, scanned the email from beginning to end. Richard's wording was as concise as ever, but a barely suppressed urgency permeated the text—the script had been circulating among several independent producers in Hollywood for years, but no one dared to film it. The subject matter was too heavy; the protagonist was a middle-aged man whose mistake led to the deaths of three children in a fire, leaving him devastated. There was no heroic arc, no redemptive climax, not even an ending that would offer the audience a moment of relief. Warner Bros. bought the priority option not because they thought it would be profitable, but because it was a story worth making. Now they needed a director.

After reading the email, Su Chen folded the paper and put it in his pocket. The general outline of the story had already formed in his mind—he certainly knew about this movie from his previous life. Kenneth Lonergan's script had circulated in Hollywood for years, hailed as "one of the best screenplays of the 21st century." The original film later won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor, depicting the true form of grief with an almost cruel honesty—not the kind of grief that can be overcome through montage, but a grief as long, silent, and never truly ending as a winter by the sea. But that was later. Right now, this script was just a project that had been rejected countless times; no one was willing to fund it.

"Reply to Richard," Su Chen picked up a glass of sparkling water from the windowsill and took a sip, "I'll take the script. But there's one condition—the lead role must be Matt Damon. Damon's face is perfect for the role of Lee Chandler. He doesn't need to act sad; his face itself is a breathing mask of sadness."

Matt Damon flew to Los Angeles a week later. His agent, after receiving Jason's call, coordinated his schedule in less than 48 hours. After reading the script, Damon reportedly sat in his living room for an entire afternoon without saying a word, then told his agent, "I have to play this role. No matter the price, no matter how my schedule is rearranged."

The meeting was arranged in the conference room of the small co-working space at Light and Shadow Era. When Damon walked in, he was wearing a dark gray hoodie, the hood still on, and his hair looked even messier than it did on screen. He shook hands with Su Chen with a strong grip, then pulled out a chair and sat down, taking the script out of his backpack and placing it on the table. Su Chen noticed that the edges of the script were frayed from being turned so many times, and many pages were covered with sticky notes, with lines drawn and dense annotations in several different colors of ink.

"I read this script four times," Damon said, getting straight to the point without any pleasantries. "After the first reading, I called my brother. Not my agent, not the producer, but my brother. I told him I had a role, a man who lost three children because of a mistake he made. I might need him to do me a favor—call me every few days while I'm filming this movie and remind me that I'm Matt Damon, not Lee Chandler."

He paused, then tapped the script cover lightly twice with his fingers.

"Director Su Chen, I know you're only eighteen this year. I also know you won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. But I still want to ask—how can you understand the grief of a middle-aged man who has lost three children? You haven't experienced anything like that."

Su Chen didn't answer immediately. He looked at Damon's eyes, which seemed particularly serious under the brim of his hoodie, and remembered a similar question You Benchang had asked him on set—"How old are you this year? How do you know these things?" At that time, he said that everyone has things they shouldn't know at this age. Now, facing Damon, he decided to rephrase it.

"Mr. Damon, grief doesn't need to be personally experienced to be understood. What needs to be understood is the form of grief." Su Chen opened his notebook, which contained his director's statement written in the week following receiving the email. "Lee Chandler's grief isn't something that explodes. It's a pervasive, constant low temperature. Most films treat grief as an event that needs to be resolved—the protagonist loses something, the protagonist suffers, the protagonist emerges from the shadows with the help of friends or family, and the ending is sunny. But Lonergan's script isn't written that way. The most honest part of this script is that it acknowledges that some grief cannot be resolved. Lee Chandler doesn't 'emerge' at the end of the film. He's still the same person, just learned to live on with that layer of frost that will never melt. What I wanted to film was that layer of frost."

Damon looked at Su Chen's open notebook, which was filled with character analyses, scene designs, reference photos of winter lighting on the Manchester seaside, and a sentence circled in red: "The camera in this film must be like a silent witness. It doesn't zoom in to capture tears, nor does it pull back to show the scenery. It just stands there, letting time flow by. Sadness doesn't need close-ups; sadness exists in every moment without movement."

Matt Damon read the passage twice. Then he gently pushed the notebook back to Su Chen, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice held a candid honesty that was no longer guarded.

"I read about that moment of stillness in the script. Li is in the lawyer's office, being asked where he was on the night of the fire. The script only had a two-word stage direction—'Silence.' But I know what's in that silence. A man tears himself to pieces in silence, then pieces himself back together, only a few pieces are misplaced. For the rest of the film, he continues to live with that misplaced self. I'm willing to play him." He took off his hoodie hood, revealing messy hair, and extended his hand, "Nice to work with you."

The co-production agreement for *Manchester by the Sea* was signed within a week. Warner Bros. held the majority stake, while Light & Shadow Studios invested 20% as a co-producer and retained the right of first refusal for a sequel. The total budget was $35 million, with a ten-week shooting schedule, all on location in the real-life seaside town of Manchester, Massachusetts—the town featured in the script. Su Chen insisted that all seaside scenes be filmed in actual winter, without using post-production color grading to simulate the cold. "The sea breeze will freeze the actors' lips to a realistic purple, a color that can't be replicated in post-production." Warner Bros.' production team initially thought this requirement would increase the difficulty and cost of filming, but after reading Su Chen's director's statement, Richard simply replied, "Do as he says. He knows what he's filming."

In early April 2001, Su Chen led a small location scouting team to Massachusetts. The seaside town of Manchester was exactly as described in the script—the winter was grey-blue, the sea churning with white foam under the leaden sky, and the masts of the fishing boats in the harbor swaying gently in the cold wind, making a clanging sound. The streets were almost deserted, with only the occasional pickup truck passing by, its exhaust fumes lingering in the cold air. Su Chen stood on the seawall, watching a lone fishing boat hauling in its nets in the distance. The sea breeze tousled his hair, carrying a salty, fishy smell and a bone-chilling dampness unique to the North Atlantic. This cold was different from Harbin's—Harbin's cold was dry, hard, and slammed in like a punch, while Manchester's cold was damp, lingering, and seeping into the bones inch by inch.

"This is it," he told Jason. "Every location in the script has to be a real location in this town. No studios, no sets. Lee Chandler's world doesn't need any artificial embellishment."

In mid-April 2001, filming for "Manchester by the Sea" officially began in Massachusetts.

The first day's call-up was for a scene where Lee Chandler shovels ice in the fish company's basement. Su Chen's choice to start here wasn't random—he wanted everyone on the crew to understand the film's tone from day one. The fish company's basement by the Manchester seaside was still bitterly cold even in May, with condensation clinging to the walls, and ice shards splashed up during shoveling leaving tiny red marks on exposed skin.

Damon, dressed in a jumpsuit and wearing old rubber gloves, stood in front of the monitor for a long time. His stylist made subtle adjustments—his hair was deliberately made drier, his lips were coated with a colorless anti-chapped balm to simulate the effect of years of sea winds, and the knees of his jumpsuit were distressed. He didn't look like Matt Damon anymore; he looked like an ordinary worker who had been shoveling ice in this cold basement for years.

  

"Before filming starts, I want to confirm something with you," Damon said, walking up to Su Chen. "This character, Lee—he's not a silent person. He'll punch someone in a bar if they look at him too much, he'll have a huge argument with his ex-wife in the street. But his anger is never real anger. Anger is just a plug he uses to block out his sadness. Once that plug comes loose, he'll break."

"That's right," Su Chen said. "You don't need to remind the audience that he's sad in every scene. Most of the time, he's just shoveling ice with a blank expression. Sadness isn't acted out on his face; it's permeated in every meaningless, repetitive action."

Damon nodded. He walked to a corner of the basement, picked up a shovel, and stood in front of a pile of ice shards waiting to be cleared. His back looked somewhat clumsy in his work clothes, and the shovel in his hand didn't seem like a tool, but more like a heavy object he habitually held, used to replace thinking.

"Action".

Lee Chandler's shovel sank into the ice again and again. His movements were slow and deliberate, mechanical, utterly devoid of emotion. The sound of the ice shattering echoed in the basement, mingling with his rhythmic breathing. He shoveled a pile, filled a bucket with the ice, carried the bucket to the other end to empty it, and then returned to continue shoveling. The entire shot lasted nearly three minutes, without dialogue, without any plot development, just a man performing repetitive, endless work in a cold basement.

"Cut." Su Chen stood up. "This one's done. Keep one."

Damon put down his shovel and looked up, somewhat surprised. "Just one shot? You think the first one could have been better?"

"No. But your scooping motion will be slightly heavier the second time than the first. Repetition makes you more impatient, and that impatience will carry over into the role."

The second take began. Damon's ice-shoveling movements had indeed changed—he was using more force than the first time, his breathing was heavier, and he swayed a little more when lifting the bucket. These changes were extremely subtle, but on the monitor, Su Chen saw what he wanted: a person's exhaustion was slowly seeping out from repetitive, meaningless labor.

「在拍《爱》的时候，」苏辰从监视器后面站起来，走到达蒙旁边，没有在说教，更像是在分享一个经验，「游本昌老师跟我说过一句话——『到了我们这个年纪，最怕的不是演不好，是演太多。』李·钱德勒不需要演太多。他的悲伤不在表情里，在动作里。在铲冰的节奏里，在走路的速度里，在酒吧里揍人之前那三秒钟的空白眼神里。」

Damon leaned the shovel against the wall, looked at Su Chen, and remained silent for a while.

"Of all the directors I've worked with, you're the only one who discussed with me on the second day of filming 'The sadness isn't in the expression, it's in the rhythm of shoveling ice.' Who have you been mentored before?"

"A very good teacher. And a very good senior," Su Chen said. He didn't mention Hou Keming's name, nor Zhang Yimou's name, but his fingers unconsciously touched the brown-covered notebook in his pocket—the notebook contained a copy of the storyboard draft that Zhang Yimou had drawn for him at the Berlin airport. The pages were yellowed, and the edges were frayed, but the pencil lines were still clear.

As filming entered its third week, the Manchester weather began to conspire against the crew. A planned beach scene was forced to be canceled due to a sudden storm, leaving the entire crew waiting in the hotel for two days. Su Chen didn't rest; he took out the scene from the script where Lee and his ex-wife Randy reunite on the street and rehearsed it repeatedly with Damon and Michelle Williams, the actress who played Randy, in the hotel conference room. This scene is the most emotionally intense in the entire film—Lee and Randy unexpectedly meet on the streets of Manchester; Randy is pushing a stroller with her child with her new husband inside. Their dialogue oscillates between apologies, explanations, forgiveness, and unforgiveness, until finally Randy cries out, "I love you," while Lee simply shakes his head and says, "I have to go."

Michelle Williams is a young actress known for her emotionally charged performances in the independent film scene. During rehearsals, she asked Su Chen, "Does Randy still love him?"

Su Chen thought for a few seconds: "Love. But love isn't the most important thing here. The most important thing is—Randy knows that Lee will never forgive himself, and she can't bear that unyielding frost for him. She still loves him, but she has learned to continue living with a man who has also been hurt. She stands in front of him with the baby in her stroller, not to show off how happy she is, but to tell him, 'You don't have to worry about me anymore.' But Lee doesn't need those words, because he has never stopped hating himself."

After listening, Michelle wrote a line in the blank space of the script. Su Chen didn't ask her what she wrote, but he noticed that in the subsequent rehearsals, every time she said "I love you," her lips would tremble slightly on the last syllable—it wasn't a tremor before crying, but a pure sense of relief, as if she had completely given up any hope of the other person changing their mind.

Three days after the storm, the beach scenes were finally ready to be filmed. The Manchester beach was littered with broken shells and seaweed washed ashore by the waves, and several seagulls circled in the distance. Damon, wearing Lee Chandler's signature dark jacket, stood alone on the seawall, gazing at the grey horizon. The camera maintained a restrained distance behind him—Su Chen didn't zoom in to capture his expression, but instead kept the shot between his back and the boundless grey ocean. This was Lee Chandler's first shot in the entire film facing the sea alone, and it was also the core embodiment of the "silent witness" cinematography style that Su Chen described in his director's statement.

An unexpected moment during filming was included in the final cut by Su Chen. A seagull suddenly swooped past the camera, leaving a very short white afterimage in the upper left corner of the frame. The cinematographer instinctively tried to adjust the camera position, but Su Chen stopped him.

"Keep it," he said. "It won't disturb the picture. Seagulls will always fly by in life."

In mid-June 2001, filming for *Manchester by the Sea* wrapped. The entire shoot took ten weeks and four days, four days longer than scheduled—most of which was delayed by storms. Post-production took place in Los Angeles, with Su Chen once again personally handling the editing.

At the beginning of the month, the initial cut was screened in a small theater within Warner Bros. Few people attended; only Richard, a few production executives, Jason, and Damon were present. The lights dimmed, and the two-hour-seventeen-minute footage slowly unfolded. The final shot—Lee and his brother sat on the deck of a fishing boat, the sea breeze strong. His brother handed him a fishing rod, which Lee took without speaking. The image faded out. A long silence filled the theater. Richard stood up, walked to Su Chen, and extended his hand. His expression was more serious than usual, but the grip on his hand was firmer than ever.

"Venice," he said. "This film has to be made in Venice."

In mid-August 2001, *Manchester by the Sea* was selected for the main competition at the 58th Venice International Film Festival. This marked Su Chen's first attempt to reach the final peak of the three major European film festivals, following his Silver Bear at Berlin and Palme d'Or at Cannes. When the news arrived, Su Chen was organizing the Oscar-winning files for *Amour*. He placed the faxed Venice selection notification alongside his previous wins—the Silver Bear, Palme d'Or, Golden Globe, and Oscar—each gleaming differently in the Los Angeles afternoon sun. He didn't spend much time reflecting. The phone rang—it was Zhang Yimou.

"The Venice main competition," Zhang Yimou's voice was still deep and steady, "isn't this the only one we're missing from the three major competitions?"

"right."

"Let's win it. Once you've won the three major awards, that'll be the time my next film starts shooting. Let's see if we can have one start filming and the other win an award in the same year."

Su Chen leaned back in his chair, watching the palm trees in Burbank sway gently in the afternoon breeze outside the window. He recalled Zhang Yimou's silhouette as he sketched storyboards at Berlin Airport, his words "You've grown up" spoken in the corridor of the Cannes Film Festival, and even earlier, he remembered moving light rigs, laying tracks, and watching Zhang Yimou wait for the lights on the grassland at 4:30 in the morning on the set of "The Road Home." Back then, he was just an intern learning; now, he was about to compete for the Golden Lion at Venice with his own work.

"After Venice, I'm going to come back and film another one," Su Chen said, "'The Hunt.' A story about lies and trust. I'd like to cast Liao Fan as the lead."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, then Zhang Yimou's voice rang out again, with a rare hint of rising intonation: "Liao Fan. You haven't collaborated since the Berlin Silver Bear. He's been waiting for your call for a long time."

Su Chen hung up the phone, stood up, walked to the window, and drew the curtains wide. The Los Angeles summer sun was blazing, and the shadows of the palm trees lay motionless on the ground. He opened his notebook, turning to the page with the bookmark—a line he had written after winning the Palme d'Or in Cannes: "Next."

The next film is already finished, and the one after that is waiting for him. He turned the bookmark to the next page and wrote a line on the new blank page:

"The Hunt. Liao Fan. Lies and trust. An autumn story."

Then he closed his laptop, picked up his phone, and dialed Liao Fan's number. When the call connected, the background noise on Liao Fan's end was the noise of Shanghai streets, with trams passing by.

"director?"

"Liao Fan, your next film is starting in October. Are you available?"

"What type?"

"A kindergarten teacher's entire life was ruined by a child's lie."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Su Chen could hear Liao Fan stop in the street, the sound of trams fading into the distance. Then Liao Fan's voice rang out again, hoarse but firm, in the same tone as when he recited his words of thanks after winning the Silver Bear in Berlin.

Send me the script. I'll be waiting.