Sebastián Lelio: ​‘We need bet­ter sto­ries if we want to have bet­ter societies’

Adapt­ed from Emma Donoghue’s 2016 nov­el ​‘The Won­der’, Sebastián Lelio’s omi­nous new film fol­lows Lib (Flo­rence Pugh), an Eng­lish nurse hired to watch over 11-year-old Anna (Kila Lord Cas­sidy) in a small Irish vil­lage in 1862. The girl has mys­te­ri­ous­ly not eat­en for four months, yet she appears to be per­fect­ly healthy, insist­ing that she sur­vives only through ​“man­na from heaven”. 

The usu­al­ly real­ist Lelio piv­ots here to Brecht­ian sto­ry­telling devices through this obscure his­tor­i­cal foot­note of the Vic­to­ri­an ​“fast­ing girls”, which becomes nar­ra­tive fuel for his explo­ration of the clash between sci­ence and faith, rea­son and super­sti­tion. We spoke to the direc­tor about the process of adap­ta­tion, the elas­tic­i­ty of belief in our ​“post-truth” era, and the risks of embrac­ing artifice.

LWLies: The Won­der marks quite a change of set­ting for you. What drew you to this material?

Sebastián Lelio: I read the nov­el and I loved it right away. I thought it was real­ly dif­fi­cult ter­ri­to­ry. A mine­field. But I just couldn’t say no, main­ly because of the two women at the cen­tre of the sto­ry. Emma was very gen­er­ous in adapt­ing the mate­r­i­al from her nov­el — the very com­plete, rich uni­verse that she beau­ti­ful­ly made, and going through the some­times bru­tal process of trans­lat­ing that into the eco­nom­ic lan­guage that a film needs. More than the fast­ing girls phe­nom­e­non, what attract­ed me is the clash­ing ways of read­ing real­i­ty, and the jour­ney that Lib (Flo­rence Pugh) has to go through. She first uses rea­son to try to under­stand the mechan­ics con­nect­ing the dots, and because of Florence’s great tal­ent, her thoughts are almost pal­pa­ble. By the time she under­stands the mechan­ics of how the girl is kept alive, the film also reveals the rea­son why the girl is mak­ing the sac­ri­fice. Love requires some action, some inter­ven­tion, and so Lib has to tran­scend her own belief sys­tem to save her­self and hope­ful­ly the girl. That spir­i­tu­al and intel­lec­tu­al elas­tic­i­ty, as opposed to fanati­cism, I real­ly con­nect­ed with. I thought it was great cin­e­mat­ic ter­ri­to­ry and a great jour­ney for a great actress.

How did you work to achieve syn­er­gy between the two leads? Flo­rence Pugh is stel­lar, and Kíla Lord Cas­sidy gives an out­stand­ing debut performance.

The Won­der need­ed an actor that was capa­ble of bring­ing view­ers on her side, so I was very hap­py when Flo­rence accept­ed. As she moves for­ward in the sto­ry, you’re think­ing what she thinks. It’s that illu­sion that you are almost lis­ten­ing to her thoughts. Florence’s integri­ty, pro­fun­di­ty and mag­net­ism allows that to hap­pen. You’re on her side, and that’s a tal­ent that Flo­rence has. At the cen­tre of the sto­ry we have this very par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship between an adult nurse and a very young girl. I real­ly liked how par­tic­u­lar that was. It’s not usu­al to see that trans­gen­er­a­tional soror­i­ty – I just love that relationship. 

With Kíla, when we saw her tape I was speech­less. She was 11. What she sent was incred­i­ble. She is extreme­ly com­mit­ted and has a deep under­stand­ing of the char­ac­ter. I think it’s also because she is the daugh­ter of actors. Her moth­er, Elaine Cas­sidy, plays her moth­er in the film. It’s one of those tal­ents that are at the same time nat­ur­al and inher­it­ed. We need­ed Flo­rence to be chal­lenged by the girl and the oth­er way around too, because it is about that rela­tion­ship. At times, it’s ten­der, and at times it’s a duel. You need that col­li­sion, that fric­tion and then that com­plic­i­ty. Both of them togeth­er, gen­er­at­ed some­thing real­ly special. 

There’s a scene where Lib says that Anna’s sit­u­a­tion is not a philo­soph­i­cal point to be dis­cussed, that she’s look­ing for facts and not sto­ries, which is evoca­tive of the post-truth era we’re in. 

It’s pre­cise­ly because of that. We are in this post-fac­tu­al era and the biggest casu­al­ty is truth. We have the feel­ing that we are inside a mir­ror salon and we don’t know which reflec­tion to live in. Now, after hav­ing killed truth, after the col­lapse of reli­gion and ide­ol­o­gy, after two World Wars, we’re in this very asphyx­i­at­ing moment where we don’t know who or what to believe, but we are becom­ing more and more aware of the pow­er of the mech­a­nisms of fic­tion. That’s the oth­er thing that real­ly inter­est­ed me about the nov­el. Lib already had a sort of meta pres­ence as the unwant­ed for­eign­er that is analysing every­thing, almost like a film­mak­er does, so I just pushed that a lit­tle bit far­ther in order to turn the film itself into part of the prob­lem. We need bet­ter sto­ries if we want to have bet­ter soci­eties. Sto­ries by default are what they are, and will take you to known places. Sto­ries by choice can have the poten­tial of cre­at­ing new, moral, eth­i­cal spaces to inhab­it indi­vid­u­al­ly and collectively. 

Can you talk about your moti­va­tion to embrace arti­fice as a fram­ing device? 

The film expos­es its arti­fice, say­ing that the view­er will be exposed to char­ac­ters that deeply believe in their sto­ries. It invites the view­er to believe in the film. It reminds them that they have for­got­ten, and that they are com­plete­ly believ­ing in what they’re see­ing. And after you see how the char­ac­ters deal pre­cise­ly with tran­scend­ing or not tran­scend­ing their belief sys­tems, and how Lib finds her solu­tion to the conun­drum. I think ulti­mate­ly, the film is ask­ing the view­er, what do you believe in? Do you know that you believe? Do you know that there’s no way you can’t avoid hav­ing to believe in some­thing? Are you will­ing by default or by choice? What you believe is not only about enter­tain­ment, it’s — espe­cial­ly today — urgent­ly political.

I’m curi­ous about your choice to fore­ground the char­ac­ter of Kit­ty with­in that.

I found it excit­ing to turn a minor sec­ondary char­ac­ter into the con­scious­ness of the film. To give her that pow­er, to be there oscil­lat­ing between being inside the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, at the same time aware that you’re believ­ing. Niamh Algar, who I con­sid­er to be a great actress, pro­vides that dou­ble move­ment. She places the nar­ra­tion in two dimen­sions: There, in 1862, in once upon a time; and Now, urgent­ly today. It’s a way of say­ing this is not real­ly 1862, of course, or some­thing that only hap­pened then. It is hap­pen­ing now and it will con­tin­ue to hap­pen unless we change our belief sys­tems regard­ing the pow­er rela­tion­ships between men and women.

This crit­i­cal engage­ment also comes across through space and block­ing. Anna’s room being on a mez­za­nine lev­el, the par­tic­u­lar order that the coun­cil of men is sit­ting in… 

Many of those were from the writ­ing. There was always some­thing very appro­pri­ate­ly fixed about the com­mit­tee of men that have polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er dic­tat­ing what things should be like and con­trol­ling the nar­ra­tive, as opposed to Lib and the nun in this case that are stand­ing in front of them. I think that’s part of the poet­ics of the use of space. Same with the mez­za­nine. She has been put there because they are all want­i­ng and will­ing to believe in her holi­ness and supe­ri­or­i­ty. We tried to use those ele­ments expres­sive­ly. We drew the entire field, togeth­er with Ari Weg­n­er. I con­sid­er her a great co-cre­ator, and an amaz­ing artist. We took two weeks in pre-pro­duc­tion, and found the dra­mat­ics and the visu­al lan­guage of it. It’s all a decision.

The Won­der is avail­able to view on Net­flix now.