Rebirth of Chinese Entertainment from the Oscars

A week after 9/11, flights across the US gradually resumed, and Su Chen flew back to Los Angeles from New York. He had been stuck in Manhattan for six days, and the Burbank sun made him squint as he disembarked. The air on the West Coast was completely different from the East Coast—dry, warm, and without the lingering sweltering smell of New York he had been experiencing for the past few days. He stood at the airport arrival gate for a couple of seconds to adjust, then saw Jason's car. Jason didn't give his usual rapid-fire report; he simply handed him a draft budget for "Buried" and a stack of Ryan Reynolds's documents, then started the engine.

"Reynolds has replied. He read the script and said he needs to audition, but he really wants to play the role. Also, the application deadline in Berlin is early January, and with filming and post-production, our time is very tight. Are you sure you can finish filming in four weeks?"

"There are no extras to manage in the coffin, no outdoor scenes to wait for the weather, and no complex scenes that require repeated lighting adjustments. It's a closed space, one actor, and all the lighting is provided by lighters and cell phone screens. The speed of filming depends on the actor. I need Ryan to memorize all the continuous emotional changes in the entire film, not just lines, but the curves of emotional changes." Su Chen opened the budget draft, and the first page of the prop list contained less than twenty items—a wooden coffin, a cell phone, a Zippo lighter, a Swiss Army knife, a non-venomous snake, several bags of sand, a glow stick, and a black cloth.

On September 25, 2001, filming for *Buried* began in a makeshift studio in Los Angeles. The studio was tiny, with a crew of only twelve—fewer than the forty-person crew for *Juno*, making it the smallest production ever undertaken by Light & Shadow Studios. The art department transformed the studio into a functional coffin-like shooting space: the walls and roof of the coffin could be disassembled independently, allowing cameras to be inserted from different angles, but no seams could be seen in the frame. The lighting department abandoned all traditional lighting fixtures, using only the flame of a Zippo lighter, the blue light from a cell phone screen, the green light from a glow stick, and an emergency flashlight as the sole light sources. Any light source that couldn't realistically exist in the scene was not allowed to appear on screen.

During the first technical test, Su Chen told Doug Smith, "I need the changes in the lighter flame's light on Ryan's face to precisely reflect the rhythm of each breath. When the lighter is almost out of gas, the flame should dim briefly; when he inhales oxygen, the flame should brighten slightly; and when he exhales carbon dioxide, the flame should dim slightly. You need to make these changes so that I can see them on the monitor."

Doug stared at the Zippo lighter for a few seconds, then took his own Zippo out of his pocket and placed it on the prop table. "Okay. I'll adjust it. This one is mine; the flame is more stable, making it easier to use as a benchmark." After saying that, he started disassembling the lighter's casing, leaving Su Chen standing to the side.

The audition was scheduled for a week before filming began. Ryan Reynolds walked into the rehearsal room wearing a plain gray T-shirt and jeans, without a script—he had memorized the entire story in chronological order. He hadn't memorized lines, but rather the minute-by-minute changes in resources within the coffin: the phone battery going from 100% to automatically shutting down, the lighter's gas going from full to just a few seconds of flame, the glow stick going from bright to dim. He treated these props as actors acting opposite him, each one carrying its own character arc.

"Director Su Chen," his first words after shaking hands were, "I have a request. When filming, I hope you really lock me in a coffin. Don't have any crew members standing where I can see you. Don't let me hear any footsteps. I need to truly feel that the space is enclosed."

Su Chen looked at him for two seconds: "We'll do a safety test before filming. The coffin lid won't lock, and you can give an emergency signal at any time. As soon as you feel you've reached your limit while acting, the camera will stop immediately."

Ryan nodded. His jawline tightened slightly under the overhead lights of the rehearsal room, unlike the comedic roles he had played—he possessed a quality that was more powerful when quiet than when speaking, a potential that had been buried for too long in serious drama. His face, even in extreme close-ups, didn't break the immersion; instead, it drew you in.

Filming proceeded at a high pace from day one. Ryan was confined in the coffin as requested, with real wooden planks pressing down on either side of his body, and the lid less than thirty centimeters from his face. The flame of a lighter was the only light source in the coffin, casting his shadow on the rough wooden planks with each flicker of the flame. Su Chen didn't use any background music to heighten the tension; all the sounds were real and present inside the coffin—the rustling of sand seeping through the cracks in the planks, Ryan's increasingly rapid breathing, the short beeps of his phone as its battery dwindled, and the faint hiss of the lighter before its flame weakened.

On several scenes, Su Chen almost held his breath behind the monitor. The emotional curve he designed for Rui'an wasn't a parabola from calm to collapse, but a more complex, fluctuating sawtooth shape—a person on the verge of giving up, whose hope is rekindled by a wrong phone call, only to be shattered again, rekindled again, and shattered again. Hope and despair didn't alternate, but coexisted. He saw the shadow of despair in hope, and refused to let go of hope even in despair.

After filming the final scene—the wooden coffin lid cracked under the weight of sand, which poured down—Ryan was pulled out of the coffin, drenched in sweat. His fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the emotional outbursts he had endured inside the coffin, his body still throbbing with adrenaline. He drank most of a bottle of water, poured the remaining half over his head, then turned to Su Chen and said in a hoarse, almost unrecognizable voice, "Director, I can only film this kind of scene once in my life."

Su Chen handed him a dry towel. "Once is enough."

In mid-November 2001, *Buried* completed its final cut in the editing room of Guangying Era. The entire film features only one scene, one actor, and uninterrupted real-time narration. Su Chen did not use any external sound effects to create tension—there was no echo inside the coffin, no distant views, no rescue team perspective; the audience, like the protagonist, was trapped in that coffin until the very last moment to find out the outcome. During the mixing, he compressed all audio tracks to an extremely low background noise level, amplifying only the sound of a lighter igniting and the movement of sand several times over, allowing the audience to feel a heavier sense of oppression in the silence than any background music could provide.

The final shot of the final cut shows sand pouring in from a crack, covering the phone screen, and the screen going black, with only the rustling sound of sand grains rubbing against wooden planks continuing in the darkness. There are no subtitles, no music; the sound effects gradually fade away completely after thirty seconds, then the film cuts directly to the end credits. Su Chen left a full three seconds of silence on the black screen before letting the sound of sand slowly disappear.

In mid-January 2002, *Buried* was selected for the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. This marked Su Chen's third time competing for a feature film at one of the three major European film festivals, following his Silver Bear win at Berlin (*Black Coal, Thin Ice*) and Palme d'Or win at Cannes (*Amour*). If he won the Golden Bear in Berlin, he would achieve a grand slam of the top prizes at the three major European film festivals—Golden Bear, Palme d'Or, and Golden Lion (to be added). When the news reached China, the media immediately focused on the suspense of "aiming for the Golden Bear": Su Chen had previously won the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin for *Black Coal, Thin Ice*, and his short films had won Best Short Film awards at Venice and Cannes, but he had only won the Palme d'Or for feature films.

Meanwhile, *Manchester by the Sea* entered awards season mode under Warner Bros.' awards strategy. Warner Bros.' distribution department agreed to Su Chen's suggestion to first arrange two limited screenings each in Los Angeles and New York to meet Oscar eligibility requirements, while simultaneously promoting Matt Damon's Venice Film Festival Best Actor award and You Benchang's Oscar nomination as double endorsements. A large-scale release would depend on the progress of awards season—if *Manchester by the Sea* received significant nominations or even awards at the Golden Globes and Oscars, then a wider release would be possible, with box office revenue several times higher than a conventional distribution model. Su Chen wrote in an email to Warner Bros.: "The story of Lee Chandler is not a film that needs a bang on its opening weekend; it's a film that needs to slowly penetrate the audience. Awards season is the best way to do that." Warner Bros. agreed.

When the Golden Globe nominations were announced, *Manchester by the Sea* received five nominations: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay. *Buried* received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and Ryan Reynolds received a nomination for Best Actor – Drama. The fact that these two films were nominated together once again highlighted the weight of the name "Su Chen" in Hollywood.

After listening to Jason read out each nomination on the phone, Su Chen only said one sentence: "My teacher at the Beijing Film Academy once said, 'How far a person can go doesn't depend on the starting line, but on the choices they make at every crossroads.' Please thank Damon and Ryan for me. Without them, these nominations would just be a bunch of blank forms."

In February 2002, a week before the Berlin Film Festival opened, Su Chen locked the final copy of "Buried" in the safe in the screening room, then opened his notebook and wrote a line on a new page: "February, Berlin. Buried."

He finished writing and placed the pen beside his notebook. Outside the window, the Los Angeles sky was still dark, with the occasional car headlights flashing through the curtains. He recalled Zhang Yimou's words during that phone call in Venice—"Take it. Once you've won the Big Three, that's when my next film will start shooting." Now he'd handed over the localization of *The Hunting* to BJ's screenwriting team, taken *Buried* to Berlin, and reserved *Manchester by the Sea* for awards season. Three projects running simultaneously, but each with its own timetable and its own battlefield.

He closed his notebook. He's flying to Berlin tomorrow.