Just feel it

Chapter 122 Just feel it

This scene looks simple, but it took a lot of effort to film. The requirements for the actors' tone and intonation when speaking were very strict, so Kevin Spacey's scene had to be postponed until tomorrow.

It is said that in the spring of 2008, Ning Hao traveled along the desert highway in the Tarim Basin to enjoy the scenery and encountered many workers who were inspecting pumps along the way.

He discovered that these workers had been living alone in desert well houses for many years and had developed mental abnormalities due to prolonged loneliness. Later, the unit changed the arrangement so that couples lived together, and there was even a phenomenon of "wife swapping".

This experience became the core inspiration for his later work, "No Man's Land." People who stay in extremely isolated environments for too long will gradually regress to an animalistic state.

Although the film crew's environment wasn't as harsh as that of a desert highway, it was still just as isolated.

A closed environment with limited information input and a lack of fresh stimulation for a long time can lead to insufficient dopamine secretion, resulting in boredom and fatigue.

When people spend a long time in a fixed space, the number of activities they can choose to do decreases significantly, the function of the prefrontal cortex gradually weakens, and people slowly develop a sense of powerlessness. This further amplifies the negative perception of minor conflicts, ultimately leading to a continuous accumulation of negative emotions.

No wonder Grandma Xiaoqing said it was normal for "film crew couples" to be together.

Shooting scenes he knew all too well every day was indeed making David feel tired and bored, but thankfully Catherine was always there to give him something new.

"Cathy?"

"Hmm, what's wrong?"

"It's too awkward if we just stay silent like this. Let me tell you a story."

"Well," Catherine paused for a moment before saying, "Go ahead and tell me, I'm listening."

He saw this story in the comments section of a video he was watching on Bilibili.

That guy said exactly what: "I used to be a deep-sea sailor, and the salary was indeed not low. There was a generally accepted principle on the ship: it's okay to eat, drink, and gamble, you can always save some money, just don't get involved in gambling or drugs."

I used to be on a ship where the captain, political commissar, and the old engineer never played cards for money; if they lost, they'd crawl under the table. Several 50s...

A middle-aged man in his late twenties earning tens of thousands of yuan a month, the top two commanders on the ship, and he crawls under a table after losing a fight—that's quite a sight.

Why did you crawl under the table?

"Hmm, it's probably related to the enclosed environment on the ship," David replied, looking up.

The enclosed environment on a ship is far more challenging than that on a film set, as it is a physically enclosed space.

Catherine took the opportunity to adjust her breathing slightly.

They are currently in the hotel bathroom. Because it is a suite, the bathroom is very spacious, almost as big as the living room.

There were two sinks, so the mirror hanging above them was exceptionally long. Catherine could catch a glimpse of her upper body in the mirror out of the corner of her eye.

Today, she wore only a navy blue fitted short-sleeved shirt, the cut of which was neat and fitted to her figure without being too tight. It looked very simple, with only a classic lapel design and a few small white buttons, which made it look quite refined.

To her right were some shampoo and shower gel, and to her left was a white curtain near the window. There were still quite a few water stains on the sink, but Catherine's attention was clearly not on that.

"Of course, besides the enclosed environment, their diet must also play a significant role."

David's voice pulled her from her reverie, and Catherine quickly responded, feigning composure.

"What's the relationship?"

"Seafood, you know that eating too much seafood can easily cause internal heat?"

The crew members at sea eat mostly seafood every day.

Seafood itself is cold in nature, and excessive consumption can cause coldness to accumulate in the body. After metabolic disorders, it is easy to experience symptoms of internal heat and inflammation.

However, that's not the main point David wanted to make.

"Seafood is actually rich in high-quality protein."

David smiled meaningfully, "Unfortunately, eating too much at once can burden the digestive system and lead to food stagnation and internal heat," manifesting as symptoms such as mouth ulcers and irritability.

In the living room, David sat down and casually picked up an orange from the coffee table. The orange was very juicy, and as soon as he peeled it and took a bite, the juice immediately flowed into his mouth.

It was a little sour and a bit fishy, ​​so he quickly took a sip of the chrysanthemum tea that had been prepared beforehand; the temperature was just right.

"That's for you, honeysuckle tea. You can try it, Cathy."

"Thank you, but I'll have the pear instead." After taking a sip, Catherine politely declined the strange tea, but did not refuse the suggestion to drink more water.

"Do you remember what I told you last time, Cathy?"

"Um, could you be more specific?" Catherine brushed the strands of hair that were stuck to her cheeks with sweat.

"Don't try to understand it, just feel it."

David used a classic line from Nolan's *Tenet* to both conclude what had just happened and to make it all the more logical—

This chapter introduces the concept behind the film's creation.

This line is from the opening scene of "Tenet" when the female scientist explains the principle of the reverse-time bullet to the protagonist.

The specific context of this line is that when the protagonist questions the rules of reverse time using conventional causal logic, the female scientist uses this line to point out that in the special rules of reverse entropy, the "cause and effect" in the inherent cognition no longer holds true, and the old logic simply cannot be consistent with itself.

This line is likely Nolan's way of breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the audience through his character.

It seems he anticipated before the film's release that ordinary viewers would be confused by the complex temporal pincer movement and entropy reduction rules. He directly used this line to give the audience a viewing hint, so they wouldn't have to nitpick every logical detail and could instead immerse themselves in the film's audiovisual spectacle and emotional rhythm.

However, David felt that this statement might be more appropriate for "Oppenheimer," as the plot of "Tenet" is so complex that it cannot be appreciated without understanding it.

When Nolan was filming Oppenheimer, he deliberately used alternating color and black-and-white editing and long, high-density dialogues to downplay the "educational feel" of traditional biographical films.

I feel that the reason for not breaking down the historical background and character relationships for the audience is to prevent them from spending their attention on "understanding all the details" and instead leave all their perception to Oppenheimer's mental world.

It feels like Nolan deliberately uses a lot of subjective audiovisual language to pull the audience directly into Oppenheimer's stream of consciousness. There's no need to scrutinize the details of political maneuvering frame by frame; you just need to immerse yourself in the mental collapse from "Prometheus" to "Death," which perfectly aligns with his core expression of "feeling first."

However, this way of making movies is clearly not acceptable to all audiences.

Three hours is a bit too long, and the dense dialogue and the large amount of historical figures and background information can easily give viewers the feeling of "taking a three-hour history class".

Although it delivers a lot of emotion, and you can definitely feel the thrill if you watch it attentively, the prerequisite is that you watch it attentively and don't get distracted.

If you lose focus even slightly, the emotional experience breaks down, and it's very difficult to pick it up again. You don't need to fully understand it to feel it, but you do need to experience it earnestly.

"Can you feel it?"

Catherine's tone became somewhat strange, because she remembered how one of her supporting legs had gone weak from the pleasure and she had almost lost her balance, so she had grabbed David's head in a moment of panic.

"How do you feel it?"

David, oblivious to the subtle shift in the other person's tone, continued explaining his understanding: "Actually, all you need to do is make sure you don't lose focus during the movie. Leave the rest to the director and just follow along. If you still can't feel it that way, then it's the director's problem."