Bringing a surreal tapestry of memory to the screen is an exercise in unearthing the ghosts of shared urban spaces.
In this deep-dive conversation, Atlantic Rhapsody director Zhong Kaifeng untangles the film’s dream-like architecture, reflecting on everything from real-world supermarket absurdities to the gritty, chaotic realities of independent co-writing.
第一问：Ding Mao回到沈阳，但电影从不把它当作简单的“回家”。沈阳在你写作时意味着什么？你想让丁茂在那里找到什么？
Q: Ding Mao returns to Shenyang after 20 years, but the film never treats his return as a straightforward homecoming. What did Shenyang mean to you when you were writing the film, and what did you want Ding to find there?
我想引用毛姆在一本关于中国的游记中序言的一段话：“我关注、寻找特立独行的人、古怪的人和当地名人。很快我就能够判断一个地方是不是想告诉我什么，如果是的话，我就守株待兔，否则就过路不停。旅途中的一切体验我都照单全收。”我有一段在沈阳的经历，那时我在跟几个朋友搞实验音乐的乐队，还有经常去的仙境俱乐部（也是电影中的酒吧），以及我对沈阳的一些认识，我的写作就由此开始。我跟丁茂对于一段时间中的沈阳有着同样的视角，并对一座城市的命运共同感知，每座城市都有相似的结构，城市的命运也许有一个原型：汇聚、扩张、中心化、奇观化、衰败再被记忆层叠。回家，如果指这个含义，就不是回到某个地址，而是回到这个原型，回到一段共有的空间记忆。
Zhong Kaifeng: I want to quote a passage from the preface to a travel book about China by Somerset Maugham: “I paid attention to and sought out the unconventional, the eccentric, and local celebrities. Soon I could tell whether a place wanted to tell me something. If it did, I would wait for it to come to me; if not, I would pass by without stopping. I accepted everything that came my way on the journey.” I spent some time in Shenyang – at the time, I was in an experimental music band with a few friends, and I often went to the Wonderland Club (also the bar in the film), and I came to understand Shenyang.
My writing began from there. Ding Mao and I share the same perspective on Shenyang during a certain period, and we share a perception of a city’s fate. Every city has a similar structure, and a city’s fate may follow an archetype: convergence, expansion, centralization, spectacularization, decline, and then being layered over by memory. If home means this, then it is not a return to an address, but a return to this archetype, to a shared spatial memory.
第二问：电影里那些人，似乎都带着自己奇怪的历史，而不是为了推动丁茂的故事而存在。你是怎么创造这些角色的？如何决定我们看到他们生活的哪些部分？
Q: The film is full of people who seem to be carrying their own strange histories, rather than simply existing to move Ding’s story forward. How did you go about creating those characters and deciding what pieces of their lives we would see?
城市空间不是一个单一的为谁准备好的故事，我希望呈现出一些有特殊感性世界的人，每个人的侧面共同反射出一个模糊的主体，可能是丁建国，可能是沈阳，可能是那个时代，也可能是丁茂自己，像是用很多故事去讲一个故事，或是一个饱含故事性的空间。我们可以看到这些“奇怪的历史”以或远或近的方位等待丁茂打开。有点像我们每天都路过或参与几次各种别人的一段时间，一段生活，但除去那一段，别的事情我们就不知道了。
Zhong Kaifeng: Urban space is not a single story prepared for someone. I wanted to present people with their own particular sensory worlds; their individual facets collectively reflect an indistinct subject – perhaps Ding Jianguo, perhaps Shenyang, perhaps that era, perhaps Ding Mao himself. It is like using many stories to tell one story, or like a space saturated with stories.
We can see these “strange histories” waiting for Ding Mao to open them, at distances near or far. It is a bit like how every day we pass by or briefly take part in fragments of other people’s time, a piece of their lives, but beyond that fragment we know nothing else.
第三问：日常与怪异之间的关系非常不寻常。完全奇怪的事情会发生，但电影就那么继续下去了。你是怎么确定电影的“正常感”的？
Q: There’s a very unusual relationship between the everyday and the bizarre in Atlantic Rhapsody – something completely strange can happen and the film just keeps moving. How did you work out the film’s sense of what should feel normal?
我想举一个例子，那是一个真实的新闻，也是电影的灵感来源。2006年的沈阳，有一家超市，超市在货架中间铺上了轨道，客人们坐在太空小车上挑选货物。超市里有一个巨大的水族箱，水族箱里是一只鲨鱼。一个夜晚，负责饲养鲨鱼的工作人员意外煮熟了鲨鱼，他负担不起赔偿，连夜逃跑。第二天，超市开始贩卖这只鲨鱼，全城人们排队抢购。超市现场烹饪，鲨鱼肉，鲨鱼汤，鲨鱼骨被一抢而空。我觉得这件事本身就十分魔幻，但又是真是的。我想这个新闻的气质便是我对沈阳这座城市的感受。我也希望这部电影是这样的气质。
荒诞不需要被解释，它只需要被当作日常生活的一部分。我觉得这种方式是最符合这部电影的。
Zhong Kaifeng: I want to give an example – a real news story that was also the inspiration for the film. In Shenyang in 2006, a supermarket laid tracks between the shelves, and customers sat in space cars to pick out goods. The supermarket had a huge aquarium, and in it was a shark. One night, the worker responsible for feeding the shark accidentally cooked the shark. He could not afford to compensate for it, so he fled overnight.
The next day, the supermarket began selling the shark. People across the city lined up to buy it. The supermarket cooked it on site, and people snapped up the shark meat, shark soup, and shark bones. I think this incident itself is very magical, but also real. I think the temperament of this news story is how I feel about the city of Shenyang. I also wanted the film to have that temperament. The absurd does not need to be explained; it only needs to be treated as part of everyday life. I think this approach suits the film best.
第四问：你和吴林峰一起编剧。这次合作是怎样的？有没有哪些部分你们对“推到什么程度”有非常不同的想法？
Q: You co-wrote the film with Wu Linfeng. What was that collaboration like, and were there parts of the story where you had very different ideas about how far to push it?
具体到“推进到什么程度”这件事上来说，他可能比我更加极端一点。我举一个例子，在影片后半段，美术馆里，日本画家Yoko趴在地上模仿狗的那场戏，那是他非常坚持的一场戏，并且认为一定要让Yoko在动物模仿的结尾，加上两声“狗叫声”，作为打点。实际上，我们拍了，演员的表演非常出色，但我最后还是剪掉了狗叫的镜头。对此，他大发雷霆。
类似的争吵，互相攻击也时常发生。某种程度上，毫无顾忌地互相攻击似乎能更有效地刺激创作。
当然，更多时候，我们只是纯粹为了开心，去攻击对方。因为创作实在是一件漫长而孤独的旅程。
Zhong Kaifeng: When it comes to “how far to push it,” he may be a little more extreme than I am. For example, later in the film, in the art museum, there is a scene where the Japanese painter Yoko lies on the ground imitating a dog. He was very insistent on this scene, and believed that at the end of the animal imitation, Yoko absolutely had to add two “dog barks” as a button. We did shoot it, and the actor’s performance was excellent, but in the end I cut the dog-bark shot. He was furious about this.
Similar arguments and mutual attacks often happened. To some extent, uninhibited mutual attacks seemed to stimulate creativity more effectively.
Of course, more often, we attacked each other purely for fun. Because creation is truly a long and lonely journey.
第五问：电影跨越了20年，但从未有传统历史片的感觉。你是如何决定哪些关于中国变化的细节属于丁茂的个人故事的？
Q: The film spans 20 years of recent Chinese history, but it never feels like a conventional historical film. How did you decide which details of that changing China belonged in Ding’s personal story?
我不把全部价值都纳入到对遥远过去的叙述中，历史是参与进来的一部分，个体感知历史的方式就是事物变化的细节。比方说现在仍存在的“事物”，它的作用不止在于“说明过去”，它仍然能被身体感受到，可以被个体重新利用，比方说临近结尾处的那个防空洞，空间里同时叠着多个时代：日军的实验基地、热电厂的人防设施、现在的网红打卡点。这三个时代的功能在同一个空间里共存。他走进去，他不是在“理解”历史，他是在“经历”历史留下的空间。
历史不是线性的，历史是叠层的。你站在一个地方，你同时站在它的过去和现在里。你不知道哪个更重要，你只知道它们都在。这种感觉，就是我对历史的感知方式，也是丁茂对父亲的感知方式。
Zhong Kaifeng: I do not incorporate all value into the narrative of the distant past. History is something we participate in; an individual perceives history through the details of how things change. For example, “things” that still exist today do not only serve to “explain the past”; they can still be felt by the body and can be reused by individuals. Take the air-raid shelter near the end: multiple eras are layered in the same space at once – a Japanese army experimental base, a civil defense facility for a thermal power plant, and today’s internet-famous check-in spot. The functions of these three eras coexist in the same space. When he walks in, he is not “understanding” history; he is “experiencing” the space left by history.
History is not linear; history is layered. You stand in one place, and at the same time you stand in its past and its present. You do not know which is more important; you only know they are both there. This feeling is how I perceive history, and it is also how Ding Mao perceives his father.
第六问：电影从上海获奖到来到伦敦电影节放映。当世界另一端的观众看一部如此扎根沈阳的电影时，你最想知道什么？
Q: Atlantic Rhapsody is coming to London Film Festival after winning the Golden Goblet in Shanghai. What are you most curious about when an audience on the other side of the world watches a film so rooted in Shenyang and in your own particular way of seeing it?
很遗憾没法来到伦敦和观众交流。
我希望观众们能够enjoy这部影片。
我最想知道的是，伦敦的观众看完之后，会不会想起他们自己国家的某个地方，或者他们自己的某个亲人。亦或是他们已经模糊的记忆。
Zhong Kaifeng: It is such a pity that I cannot come to London to communicate with the audience in person.
I hope the audience can enjoy the film.
What I most want to know is whether, after watching it, London audiences will think of some place in their own country, or someone in their own family. Or perhaps a memory of theirs that has already become blurred.
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