‘When you’ve embodied presence, then we will trust you’
Marc J. Francis describes the making of Walk With Me, his atmospheric film depicting the life of zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
Thich Nhat Hanh is an unsung hero. He’s a quiet, humble Vietnamese monk who has shied away from publicity for most of his life. In 2011, I was called by a dear friend and asked if I’d help him make a film about him.
I didn’t know anything about Thich Nhat Hanh when I set off on that journey, I didn’t have any idea what I was looking for. But at that time in my life, I was feeling unfulfilled and it was an opportunity to spend time with essentially the greatest zen master of our time and I felt like I could do with that.
I flew out to a monastery in California, where Thich Nhat Hanh was. There was a two-week retreat going on and I arrived in the middle of it. I witnessed the calm and wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh for the first time and I was entranced. I knew I had to spend more time with this man.
The challenge of finding the story
But right from the start, the message came back that ‘If they want to make a film about me, they can’t make it about me alone’. If we wanted to film in the monastery the one condition was that the story had to be about the community of monastics, not singularly about him.
That’s because, in his view, we live in a society where we have disempowered ourselves as communities and citizens to leaders who make decisions on our behalf, which essentially lead us into scenarios that don’t necessarily serve our best interests. He believes that until we as communities can come together and empower ourselves with those decisions collectively, we don’t have a chance to live freely.
So this presented a great challenge for us as filmmakers.
We looked around us and we saw 600 monks all with bald heads in the same brown robes and thought ‘how the fuck are we going to do this?!’
We had to invest a long time living in the monastery, getting to know people on a personal basis and building a lot of trust while we followed those individuals and their journey.
Living in mindfulness
Initially, we wanted to get the film done quickly – we didn’t have much money, but they said to us very clearly, “You need to practice mindfulness, you need to embody presence and when we feel you’ve embodied presence, then we will trust you and let you capture our story”. And so, we had to do the training.
We spent a lot of time embedding ourselves in this society, travelling to monasteries throughout the US and then settling in their main monastery in France where we regularly spent time. We originally thought that the film would take 18 months. It took four years.
Max and I had to really let go of this idea of having to have a deadline and of needing to know what the film is, in order to find the story through the process of being in the present moment.
Eventually it was like putting together a puzzle of a thousand pieces. You don’t quite know – you have a vague idea of the picture but you just have to trust that this piece goes with that piece and hopefully eventually it will come together to form a picture.
People need heroes like this
The film reached a natural conclusion when Thich Nhat Hanh had a massive stroke. It happened just after we thought we were coming to the end of our filming. He lost his ability to speak, he lost his ability to walk. He virtually lost his ability to eat and he ended up in intensive care for over a year. It was very sad. Thought he eventually got rehabilitated to the point where he can be wheelchaired around and is doing well.
What happened then, was when we were editing the film we realised that we had to be very careful about the decisions that we made, because we were really the ones who captured him in a way that no one has had the chance to capture. There was definitely a feeling of responsibility, of ensuring that his legacy is well represented.
When we finished, it was like me saying ‘enough of that now, as much as I respect your humbleness, people really need to know more about you’.
People need heroes like Thich Nhat Hanh, to understand that you have to live your life from your heart centre, not from a controlling, dominating, aggressive standpoint as personified by people like Trump, who in my view tend to take up most of the airwaves.
Thich Nhat Hanh did go and see the film in the cinema in Thailand, with some popcorn, I understand. He was very happy with it.
Walk With Me in Sound is due for release in 2021.
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