Early in writer-director Ildikó Enyedi’s century-spanning Silent Friend, Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s character, neuroscientist Dr. Tony Wong, describes two distinct forms of consciousness during a lecture. The first is the spotlight model, a standard way of thinking among adults that narrowly focuses on problem-solving immediate tasks at hand. But a second, common among babies before they’re otherwise acculturated to an ever-optimizing world, is a lantern-light consciousness. This diffuse sense of awareness allows empathy and curiosity to guide their ability to make connections in their surroundings.
It’s the latter style of perception that Enyedi channels throughout her film, which is anchored by a solitary ginkgo tree on the campus of the University of Marburg in Germany. The plant becomes more than just a passive observer to the travails of those traversing the campus, from its trailblazing first female student (Luna Wedler’s Grete) in the early 20th-century, to a solitary young radical in the 1970s (Enzo Brumm’s Hannes), to an isolated Dr. Wong during the Covid lockdown of 2020. It’s an organism that can provide comfort and clarity to anyone willing to think outside their anthropocentric understandings of existence.
No one in Silent Friend channels this enlightened mindset quite as poignantly as Leung, whose quietly expressive face has captivated global audiences for decades. The actor imbues a graceful sense of humility and humanity to his character’s heady investigation into the gingko’s potential consciousness. Leung’s openness to explore new ways of working in his first collaboration with a European arthouse director demonstrates that a lantern-light consciousness still shines brightly in his own mind—and can illuminate the way for others.
I recently spoke with Leung in New York, where he was celebrating both the opening of Silent Friend and a career-spanning retrospective hosted by Film at Lincoln Center. Our conversation covered what he learned from his study of neuroscience, why Enyedi directed him simply to be present, and how he’s been changed by connecting to the consciousness of plants.
What was your experience during the pandemic lockdowns? Did you awaken to other perceptions of time like your character?
I think they’re very similar in all kinds of aspects. I was shooting Shang-Chi during that time, and I went back to Tokyo on April Fool’s Day. After one week, every hotel closed, all the shopping malls closed, and no one was on the streets. I never had this kind of feeling before. The most famous Starbucks is in one of the tourist spots, and I just walked in. Normally, I can’t go inside because there are hundreds of people lining up to get inside. I’m riding on my bike everywhere, and no one’s on the streets. I was there alone in Japan for three months, and I [went] everywhere. All the places that I couldn’t go before, all the tourist spots. It’s very similar [to Dr. Wong]. You’re isolated from other people. But the only difference is, in this movie, I’m more in nature, aligned with plants and trees, than my experience in Japan.
You dove into studying some of the neuroscience that Dr. Wong teaches. Is that just to convincingly deliver the dialogue, or do you need this grounding more on an intellectual level to understand the character?
With the script, there wasn’t so much information for the character, so I started approaching this character from the angle of [being a] neuroscientist. What I try to do is convince myself, brainwash myself, that I’m a neuroscientist. I started studying and preparing for six months, reading all the material Ildikó sent me. I went to different universities to find real neuroscientists to do research, sneaking into a hospital to experience the EEG thing. Then, I studied all the other books about plants, intelligence, psychology, and a book about how we should share this world together, including with A.I. I think [with] this process, when you’re doing this every day, you get into your character, unconsciously. It’s important to me because I have to give a lecture. You have to build up the confidence that you are a neuroscientist to give a lecture in front of 200 students, and you have to know what exactly you are talking about.
What did your research teach you about sharing the world with A.I.?
I think people are afraid of A.I. because of the way we deploy it. If we use it for good, then we don’t have to be afraid. But it seems like it’s going the other way around. It seems like the most advanced A.I. is going to the military, and that’s very scary! So what I learned from that book is we should rethink our relationship with other living beings and A.I., because that’s our future.
Did the process of making the film teach you about how to exercise the lantern-light consciousness that your character lectures about?
I think this movie taught me a lot about science, and the biggest impact on me is the study of plants. Before this project, plants were just plants. And after I studied plants’ intelligence, I found out that they aren’t just living beings. They’re sentient beings. Maybe they have consciousness, and this changed my perspective toward plants. If you have that respect for plants, then what about other living beings? I’m a Buddhist. I used to do meditation and retreats, and it’s very similar to the scene where I’m alone in nature. I don’t feel lonely, but I feel more calm and peaceful. It seems like you’re in a deeper state of awareness. You’re more aware of yourself and your surroundings. And I think that’s quite like the lantern-light consciousness.
The gingko tree is the main character of Silent Friend, so did you treat it like any other human scene partner or just another piece of set decoration?
I think before, I would just treat it as a tree. But now, after all this knowledge I learned from plants, I will see it as a sentient being. Something like us human beings, but they live upside down. The roots are their brain, the trunk is their body, and the limbs are the branches. And when you have that much knowledge about them, you will find them more amazing. How they share information with the roots and the fungus, how they react to the outside world, and they even know if some insects are eating them. They know, so you will see them in a different way. I don’t know whether that will show a different expression on my face in the camera or not! But at least in my mind, I will have a different perspective towards them.
How does thinking of trees as sentient beings change the way you relate to nature?
You have a different kind of feeling. You will find that you have company all the time. I jog at the top of the mountain every day. Now, I feel like I have company, and I didn’t have this kind of feeling before. They know and can feel you are there.
Is that comforting, rather than scary, to feel like you’re always being watched?
Yeah, it’s comforting! At the very beginning, it’s very weird. But, after some time, you feel like you have a lot of company.
Whenever you finished all of this prep, Ildikó’s direction to you was, “I just want you to be there.” What does that mean to you as an actor just to be?
She told me why she wanted to write a character for me is because one time she saw me in an interview, maybe in Cannes. She saw something inside me that she’d never seen in any other films before. I think she wants to show that side of me, so that’s the reason why she just wanted me to be there. Not trying to act, but trying to feel and give. She wants something authentic, not artificial, not anything designed. That’s why she wanted me to be there, just presence.
A lot of the films you made with Wong Kar-wai are about the inability of people to connect, but Silent Friend is such a beautiful look at humanity’s ability to connect across time, space, and even species. What have you learned about what it takes to make a meaningful connection?
I think the relationships between human beings are far more complicated than humans to nature, because not everyone is the same. Sometimes, you have to compromise. You have to actually be able to embrace the differences. Truthfulness and honesty are the fundamental ways of connecting with people. But it’s difficult.
Translation assistance from Joanna Lee
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