ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Virginia Woolf

Chasing the Truth: 1on1 with Chanya Button (VITA AND VIRGINIA)

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Directed by Chanya Button, Vita and Virginia tells the story of the passionate love affair between iconic authors Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki). Through her unique vision, the film explores not only the impact of these women as writers, but their progressive feminist voices as well. Having loved the works of Virginia Woolf since her youth, Button argues that there is much for a story like this to say in our current cultural climate. As a result, in many ways, she feels that the lives of these women projected contemporary values and ideas.

“I think the past has a lot to teach us about the future, especially at a time sort of globally, politically, where we’re really uncertain about [things]…,” she believes. “I think the past has a lot to teach us about the future. That’s not why I made Vita and Virginia but my love of literature and history makes me believe that the past can tell us a lot about the future. Also, it’s a film set in the 1920s, but Vita and Virginia lead lives that would be progressive even for now. They were both married and their marriages were incredibly open and supportive. Their husbands were incredible men… who never held their wives back from anything personally, professionally, [or] romantically. They were enormously progressive about gender and sexuality and art. So, [the film is] set in the 1920s, but it feels like a very progressive subject matter for me. They were such unconventional women and they had such an unconventional relationship [that] I knew I would need to approach the film in a very unconventional way to be true to the sort of the spirit of that.”

One manner in which these women were unconventional for their time is revealed through their views on masculinity and femininity. With views that on gender equality that were extremely progressive, the women found genuine energy from each other that fed their creativity.

“What Virginia understood was that your essential self can have both masculine and feminine qualities. Vita enacted that in her life by having relationships with both men and women. I think she had a sexual appetite and approach to romance that was more stereotypically male in that she would pursue and conquer mainly women, sometimes men. I think our film explores that too. There is masculine and feminine in everyone and I think our film has a very specific approach to vulnerability. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make the film as well because it’s a film about Virginia who is a person who was treated by her community and by the outside world as someone who was incredibly fragile because of the struggles she had because of [her] emotional, psychological challenges. Whereas actually this relationship which everybody presumed would really overwhelm, her own creative genius came to her rescue and she wrote this novel as a way of sort of digesting and conquering this experience. In a way, it’s a film as well about a woman’s heart and mind and soul and the creative genius rescuing herself from what is a very universal experience, which is a very sort of intoxicating love affair that isn’t going well.”

In development of the film, Button was as thorough as possible in her research, making sure to get the support of the families involved. However, she also feels that there’s a subjectivity to the film that makes it exciting for her.

“I was really, really keen to bring our own response to it,” Button explains. “I think what’s different is that it’s mine, Gemma and Elizabeth’s version of this story. It’s a really expressionistic piece. Judith Nicholson (Vita Sackville-Wests granddaughter) and Viriginia Nicholson (Vanessa Bell’s—Virginia Woolf’s sister—granddaughter) have been incredibly supportive of the film and our research was very respectful and detailed. So, it had their blessing, which was very. But it’s also our response to it. It is in itself expressionistic. I love that none of our actors look exactly like them or sound exactly like them. I wanted to take these actors who are so wonderful and it’s their approach. It’s what we can know about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West from their writings, their letters, their work, their families, mixed with Gemma’s voice and Elizabeth’s voice.”

As is the case in any biography, there is a balance between truth and fiction within the film. Regarding this balance, Button argues that there is only so much that one can understand about a person given the information available.

“In a way that film’s got sort of this amazing kind of meta thing going on where it is a film with a biographical leaning about Virginia writing a sort of non-biography of Vita. If you looked at my text messages today and said what I was saying to everyone, you would go to certain picture of what’s going on in my life in your mind that might not be true exactly what’s going on. So, letters and writings are only fragments that suggest what’s going on so we can’t know exactly. I was very aware of that making the film in a quite liberating way because we’re saying that we will do this extensive research and be as authentic as we can, but… I think biography is fascinating. You can chase the truth, but you can never know it.”

In our current cultural climate, Vita and Virginia continues the growing trend of allowing the opportunity for different voices to speak to the masses. According to Button, it’s stirring to be a part of something on a broad scale that is opening the door for others to find their voice.

“I think it’s really exciting because, as filmmakers, we can often feel really isolated from each other,” she states. “Actors know more about directors than directors [know about each other] because they work with more of them. We can feel really isolated from each other, so I think it’s really exciting [for there to be] a wind where we’re all going in the same direction. That’s really cool. I think it’s really exciting. I think it does have an overlap with a kind of political conversation where we’re talking about how can we open up the spectrum and hear different voices.”

“I think there absolutely is that sense of finding a voice [within the film] but I think that, in the case of Vita and Virginia, these women have found their voices. There’s nothing adolescent about them. There’s nothing pubescent about them. It’s not coming of age anything. These women are of age and I think more films should be made about women of age. I see a lot of kind of younger women on screen and I think that’s brilliant too. You’re either pubescent or you’re an elderly sage–sort of Yoda–and there’s a lot that goes on in between I think. These women aren’t finding their voices, but they’re being heard. We’re listening to them for the first time. They are heard by their husbands in the film. They’re heard by their communities in the film. They’re making brilliant work that people think is fantastic. So I’ve tried to make film where they’re not finding their voices. They know them. They’re listening to each other. They’re listened to within their worlds and it’s us who’s listening to them for the first time.”

In light of this, as a woman director, Button is also thrilled at the opportunity to have a chance to speak her own voice through film as well. Nevertheless, she also maintains that her motivation remains her desire to offer a different perspective as opposed to any direct political agenda.

“I think the kind of the work is very separate from the movement,” she reflects. “I think it’s really important that I keep that very much in the front of my mind. I think I wouldn’t make good films if I cooked up an agenda and then tried to make films that chase that agenda. In my mind I keep things very, very separate. There’s an intersection because I’m interested in a female perspective on life… What I’d like to do is make films that offer a different perspective, whether that’s a female perspective, whether that’s has to do with class or race or whatever. I think we’ve talked a lot about the male gaze and I think we’ve talked less about the female gaze. I’d like to make films that have a female gaze because I don’t know what it is. I’d like to make something that tries to look for it. but there’s not an agenda. Both things really interest me and, in my mind, I keep them very separate. I enjoy having conversations about it, but it’s not why I’m on set.”

Vita and Virginia premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

History’s Voice: 1on1 with Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki (VITA AND VIRGINIA)

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Set in 1922, Vita and Virginia tells the story of the passionate love affair between iconic authors Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki). Though happily married, Vita is as well-known for her sexual dalliances with women as she is for her wealth and written work. When she is invited to meet Virginia, Vita is ecstatic and becomes infatuated with the notion of seducing her.

Based on the play written by Eileen Atkins (who also wrote the screenplay), Vita and Virginia explores not only their impact as writers, but their progressive feminist voices as well. As a result, when the opportunity came up to portray a ground-breaking woman like Virginia Woolf, actress Elizabeth Debicki jumped at the chance.

“I first read Virginia Woolf when I was 17, when I was an acting school,” Debicki recalls. “The first thing I read was A Room Of One’s Own. I used to have to take the train for almost an hour each way to school and I have very distinct memories of reading on the train. And I read it a lot too. It’s a tiny book. So I read it quite a few times. I found it seminal. When I think back to it, it really changed a lot of my thinking about independence. I read To The Lighthouse at some point and didn’t keep under my pillow or anything. Then, when Chanya asked me to play this, I locked myself up in an attic room and read everything like a mad woman. So, that was my relationship with them.”

“I wish I [had been] a progressive 17-year-old feminist woman that read Virginia Woolf,” Arterton responds emphatically. “I didn’t even know about Virginia Woolf. I came from a background [that wasn’t very academic]. So, it wasn’t until Eileen Atkins handed me the script that I started reading about Virginia and Vita and then I just read everything. I think that Mrs. Dalloway is one of the most perfect pieces of writing ever. At the time, Vita was the more successful writer. She was a best-selling writer and, though was known for her romantic trysts, she was an okay writer. She completely idolized Virginia and thought she was a genius. I think something in Vita and Virginia and Orlando is this wanting to be better than they are… I tried to read Vita’s work with the same sort of gusto. I feel like Vito really excelled in her letters because she was a very passionate, seductive and direct. Their letter writing is much more fun to read.”

With this in mind, in any attempt to bring two such essential literary icons to the screen, it becomes imperative to perfect their use of language. Despite having access to their numerous letters to one another, one of the greatest challenges for Arterton and Debicki was giving life to the heightened nature of the dialogue

“It was kind of interesting because the play that Eileen Atkins wrote is the letters. It’s practically verbatim based on the letters,” Arterton begins. “Then she wrote the screenplay and there were still huge fragments of letters in there, but actually we sort of broke it down a little bit, mixed them up and worked it more into dialogue. The script is very heightened I think. One of the challenges that scared me about it—and made me want to try to do it—was that it read like a play on film It almost reads like verse… I think that there was this degree with which you had to surrender to it. When you do Shakespeare and [wonder if] Lady Macbeth just comes up with that concept on the spot, you must accept it as an actor in order for your audience to have a chance of accepting that. It was sort of like the accents that we committed to doing. They really did sound and speak like that, but it’s very heightened.”

“I remember one day we were [saying that] this is hard stuff to get your mouth around, even just speaking it, let alone filling it with life and truth,” she continues. “It’s muscular and I loved that. Also, they used their words. I mean, these are two writers. They used their words as weapons, as tools and there’s this one scene where Vita is trying to impress Virginia, and the moment is so gross. I think just speak normally and she might listen to you. You just think, ‘Come on,’ but that’s what they did in their writing.”

Interestingly, for their time, both Vita and Virginia were viewed as incredibly progessive in their views on modern feminism and gender roles. For instance, at one key moment within the film, Virginia is confronted by her husband’s outdated opinion on a woman’s position within the home. According to Arterton and Debicki, this instance reveals the limitations placed on her gender during the time, which Virginia refers to as ‘damaging absolutes’

“He says talking about what the woman needs to do in order to create a successful marriage,” she says, “and the woman should surrender her opportunities and that will then you must be passive and actually you don’t have to be any of those things. You can be all of those. You can be whatever you want and still be feminine, if you would like to label yourself in that way… [Right before that, he said that] the man is the plant. The woman is the soil, which is ultimately means that the woman is there support the man and to nourish the beautiful, great thing that goes out in the world. The woman is just this underneath thing, It doesn’t get any of the glory. No sun. No fun.”

“Damaging absolutes [are] a really interesting concept to pick up on, I think,” Debicki replies. “What I love about these two women, among many things, is that they were so incredibly progressive. They actually didn’t label themselves [neither for] their sexuality, their creative endeavors [nor] how they viewed their marriages. Their husbands didn’t label them or try to box them. They were really progressive… The fact that they [were] publicly together was scandalous. Not only that, it was illegal. To this day, people in the limelight creatively who decide to openly be open about their relationship can suffer from that because people would like them to be absolutely one thing and human beings aren’t. But actually, we often try very hard often to be in order to please people or at least know where to put us.”

Similarly, this view also provided a space where Arterton could connect with her character insofar as she too despises being placed in any sort of specific ‘box’.

“Also, I think that’s the thing that people like to be able to play someone somewhere,” Arterton echoes. “I always get so frustrated as an actor because I think, “No, I’m not that thing that you think I am” That’s why I think we go for these roles. They’re like always very, very different and scary to kind of break out of those things and Vita and Virginia just lived there. They did what they wanted. Vita would go out dressed as a man around London, like the acting game where you pretend to be Irish for the day and go into a shop, but as a man. [laughs]”

Despite the film’s period setting, the film has a definitively modern tone. For Arterton, this youthful vibrance within the piece was deliberate in order to separate it from other more traditional period films.

“We were aware of the period obviously with wardrobe set and… what was happening at that time, but I think sometimes period dramas can feel quite sort of stiff and inaccessible,” she claims. “We wanted this to feel young and I think it does achieve that. I wanted it, we wanted it. It’s made by young women and we wanted it to [reach all the people] that have never read Virginia Woolf or Orlando. We want you to feel inspired to read it after seeing this film. If these people lived now, they’d be like the leading art. They’d be like the kind of crazy punk out there, breaking free. We wanted to show that.”

“Well, I think that people can find Virginia Woolf’s work intimidating because of its density or enclosed but it’s not true,” Debicki argues. “Her work actually opens up to you or is so fluid and so accessible. I think that people could [feel that way about any writer, like] Shakespeare and Chekhov. It’s very easy to form ideas about things you don’t know about. So I mean if this film inspires young women to actually pick up To The Lighthouse and [read it], then that’s a beautiful thing. I just think you can learn so much from her work.”

Vita and Virginia played at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.