Complex Female Character

Seed & Spark: “Not Even Once”

I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

Bre Mueck and Matthew Luret at the park in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

This is a guest post by Ryan M. Moore.

My first memory of being exposed to a feminist film (and one of my first memories, period) is of my mom setting up a projector in our basement (8mm? 16mm? I am old), loading it with a reel she had borrowed from the library (yes, you could do that!) and showing my brother and me an animated film called Reverse-a-quake! It was set on an island which was hit by a big earthquake, which caused all of the men to have to switch to doing what had previously been women’s work, and vice-versa. That there was anything political about this storyline sailed right over my 6-year-old head, but knowing what I know now, it must have sunk in a little.

I call myself a feminist without reservation, but I didn’t set out to make a feminist statement, or any kind of political statement, when I wrote and directed my feature film debut All Earthly Constraints. The lead character, Emily (played by the amazing Bre Mueck) is a struggling screenwriter (“Write what you know!”) who works in a gelato shop. Emily’s screenplay is about a struggling screenwriter named Emma (“Write what you know!”) who works in a coffee shop, and is also secretly a superheroine named Emmageddon. Emma is Emily’s “Mary Sue” (a character that is a thinly veiled, idealized version of her author), and Emmageddon is Emma’s. It’s Mary Sues all the way down.

In one scene, Emily has just left her writer’s group in tears after having her script “Emmageddon” savaged (“Self-indulgent! Masturbatory!”) by the sadistic self-proclaimed group leader, John. Soft-spoken Dylan goes after Emily, and they end up talking and drinking at a local park. In the course of their first-ever real conversation, this happens:

DYLAN: I guess I just think about… sometimes, you know, a real job, a family, stability. No “someday when I make it.” Is that so wrong? I mean, haven’t you ever thought you might be worthwhile, or good enough, or whatever, just how you are—just being you?

EMILY: Not even once.

DYLAN: (after a long pause) Me neither.

Shooting this scene was incredibly strange. To hear and see the most honest thing I’ve ever written about the creative process brought to life by two amazing actors, seemed, at the time, like an affirmation of all the choices I’ve ever made. I fell largely on Emily’s side as I thought, “Yeah, I’m doing the right thing with my life.”

Three months later, mired in the post-production process, I can see Dylan’s side too. Maybe it should be enough to just work your job and live your life and be happy with you are. Maybe I would’ve been happier that way. Maybe it’s just my ego that tells me I can’t possibly ever settle for “normal.” It’s been an incredibly difficult process trying to finish this film—making a movie is hard. Trying to do anything well is hard. Life is hard.

Bre Mueck as Emmageddon in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

But what I learned in the process of shooting that scene (and of tangling up my reality and emotional state with that of my character’s to a frankly disorienting extent that I hope would make Charlie Kaufman proud), was this: Emily is not a “strong female character.” Emily isn’t “strong,” at least not exclusively. She starts the scene in tears, and continues by admitting her deepest self-doubts to Dylan, not because she has any real connection with him (yet), but because he’s there and willing to listen and pay for the booze.

And Emmageddon isn’t always “strong” either, even though she’s a self-proclaimed superhero. Who would be interested in seeing a story about someone who was nothing but “strong,” all the time, in every situation? It would be like watching a film about a slab of granite. I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

I have a lot of problems with the current crop of superhero movies. While the artistry and craft that goes into their creation is almost literally unimaginable, all too often they exist exclusively in the realm of black and white, “good guys” and “bad guys,” strong, wise-cracking male heroes and female sidekicks who exist mostly as window-dressing, or as sexual conquests for the men. One of my goals in creating All Earthly Constraints was to create a female superhero who was also human: Yes, she kicks, punches, and slaps people who deserve to be kicked, punched and slapped, and she’s good at it. But she has no special powers and she can be hurt, physically and emotionally. Under the costume, she’s still a person. I’m not quite delusional enough to believe that All Earthly Constraints will ever be playing in your local multiplex next to the latest Summer tentpole, but I hope it starts a few conversations, or adds a little bit to some that are already happening.

You can learn more about All Earthly Constraints, and follow or support our crowdfunding campaign at Seed & Spark.

Ryan M. Moore is a writer and director living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. All Earthly Constraints is his first feature film.

‘Mockingjay – Part One’: On YA Dystopias, Trauma, and the Smokescreen of the “Serious Movie”

Though we get a sense of District Thirteen’s manipulations in the novel, Katniss savvily negotiates with them, resists their orders, and remains distrustful of their motivations, in contrast to her comparatively slight unease in the film. While these changes leave most of the major plot elements intact, they undermine our sense of Katniss as an intelligent political actor who is connected to and moved by the revolution itself, rather than just her personal stake in the events.

This guest post by Charlotte Orzel appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Mockingjay: Part One, the latest instalment of the massively popular Hunger Games series, begins with a terrified Katniss Everdeen huddled in a corner, muttering frantically to herself in a tearful fit, before being dragged off and sedated. Even for a series whose subject matter is children killing each other for sport, from its opening moments the film presents itself as noticeably darker than its predecessors. Director Francis Lawrence paints a grim portrait as the film explores the consequences wrought by the earlier events of the series, touching on torture, the large-scale destruction of warfare, violent suppression of insurrection, the mechanics of war propaganda, and the trauma the series’ violence has inflicted on its characters. But Mockingjay’s dark trappings mask the way the film foregrounds Katniss’ desperate romantic plight at the expense of both other aspects of her character and coherent dystopian critique. In doing so, Lawrence spins the illusion of a gritty, realistic criticism of war and propaganda headed by an independent, emotionally complex female character without truly providing the substance of either.

In Mockingjay, Katniss is at the centre of a political maelstrom, being urged by District Thirteen, the military leaders of the rebellion, to help create the propaganda material it needs to incite a revolution against the totalitarian Capitol. Katniss is suffering from PTSD and distraught about the capture of Peeta Mellark, her partner and love interest from two previous rounds in the Hunger Games. But when Peeta is forced to broadcast his demands for a ceasefire by the Capitol, Katniss concedes to take on the role of the revolution’s figurehead to ensure his immunity should the rebels win. Desperate to protect him from harm, Katniss must negotiate both District Thirteen’s subtle machinations and the violent retaliation of President Snow as she becomes entangled in the representational politics of a national war.

This is a significant departure from the way these events play out in the source material. In the first half of the novel, Katniss makes several decisions that within Lawrence’s film, are influenced or made for her by the rebel government and her handlers. For instance, the novel opens on Katniss having chosen to return to return to her firebombed home district against the wishes of President Coin’s strategy team. What she witnesses there causes her to react passionately against Peeta’s coerced call for a ceasefire and willingly adopt the role of Mockingjay. She does this not to ensure Peeta’s immunity, but to do what she can to strike back against the President Snow’s regime after the violent Capitol oppression she has witnessed and experienced. After witnessing a strike on the hospital in District Eight, it is Katniss who actively seeks out the cameras to make a speech to inflame the districts against President Snow’s regime. In the film, these events are reframed as ideas conceived by the rebels and their propaganda machine to maneuver Katniss into furthering their cause. Though we get a sense of District Thirteen’s manipulations in the novel, Katniss savvily negotiates with them, resists their orders, and remains distrustful of their motivations, in contrast to her comparatively slight unease in the film. While these changes leave most of the major plot elements intact, they undermine our sense of Katniss as an intelligent political actor who is connected to and moved by the revolution itself, rather than just her personal stake in the events.

But the most important difference from the novel is the absence of Katniss’ voice from Mockingjay. The novel, told in first-person, gives the reader a clear sense of Katniss’ desires and emotional state. Both verbally and cinematically, the film often fails to articulate her feelings about the proceedings, outside a sense of generalized trauma, vague unease about District Thirteen and her mounting concern for Peeta’s well-being. Part of this problem is the reduced role played by Gale Hawthorne, who is not only a love interest to Katniss, but her best friend since childhood. In earlier films and the novels especially, Gale’s function as a character is not only to create romantic conflict, but to also advocate for the necessity of the revolution and articulate the violence enacted by the Capitol, including how it extends beyond the Games to the oppression of the districts. By cutting down his role and changing the content of his conversations with Katniss into arguments about Peeta, Mockingjay squanders a valuable opportunity to allow Katniss to voice her perspective on the political environment she finds herself caught up in. It also seems to do so to up the romantic stakes at the expense of portraying a more nuanced relationship between these characters that includes but is not limited to romantic love. Without allowing Katniss to express her viewpoints on these broader issues, through her relationship with Gale or another character, the film feels directionless except in moments where Peeta’s safety is at risk.

Mockingjay appears to justify this shift in narrative purpose through Peeta’s capture itself. The choice to continuously orient Katniss’s decision-making around Peeta suggest that it is his capture that is the major source of her trauma, the trauma that pulls her attention continuously away from the political scene. As other reviewers have argued, it’s refreshing that Katniss is permitted to show emotionally vulnerability as the heroine of a major action film. But not only does much of Katniss’ trauma stem from issues unrelated to Peeta—growing up in the Capitol’s oppressive society where she lived on the edge of starvation; being subjected to violence and forced to perpetrate it within the Games; witnessing the violent repression of resistance to the regime; the destruction of her home district—these traumatic events are precisely the reasons she should be (and in the book, is) compelled to fight back against the Capitol. It would be remiss not to mention that these aspects of her history and the film’s political themes would have also have benefitted by portraying Katniss as a woman of colour, as she is strongly implied to be in the novels. In this volume of the series, doing so would have drawn our attention to the powerful social and psychological effects of racism, and the way its violences intertwine with capitalism. This choice would have also given more potent, layered meaning to Katniss’ newfound position as the “face of the revolution.” Ignoring these important elements of Katniss’ experience and the way they affect her decisions diminishes the particularity of her pain and the complexity of her character. And framing the progression of events in this way suggests that even if we do see more political action from Katniss in the next film, it will be incited by Peeta’s victimization by the Capitol and not her own experiences of oppression and violence.

To a certain degree, Katniss is also incapacitated by Peeta’s capture in the novel. The key difference, however, is that Katniss’ mounting fears about Peeta’s torture lead to a direct conflict between her personal and political goals: any action she takes to spur on the revolution will be met with physical harm to the boy she has grown to love. This internal struggle makes Katniss feel like a whole person with a range of concerns, but it also generates the kind of narrative momentum that drives effective stories.

Making Peeta’s capture and rescue Mockingjay‘s central concern also considerably deflates the film’s dystopian themes. Mockingjay purports to have something interesting to say about capital, war, propaganda, and trauma, but without Katniss’ perspective on these issues to anchor us, they lack both nuance and coherence. Lawrence draws parallels between the propaganda produced by District Thirteen and the spectacle of the Hunger Games, but while this gives us a broad sense that we should distrust President Coin and understand that war propaganda is bad, it fails to articulate this connection in a meaningful way. The film treats Katniss’ trauma as a cue that the film is dark and serious, while simultaneously using it as an excuse for avoiding a clear stance on its political issues. Unfortunately, these problems prefigure similar issues in the final half of Collins’ book that will likely make their way onscreen in the next film.

The problem with Katniss’ detachment from the political action becomes most acute in the last portion of the film, when the rebels launch a risky mission to rescue Peeta from the Capitol. In an effort to distract the Capitol forces, Katniss speaks directly to President Snow via video feed, telling him she never asked to be in the Games or become the Mockingjay, and that she only wanted to save her sister and Peeta. She begs him to release Peeta, offering to give up her role as figurehead and disappear. Then, conceding that he’s won, she pleads to let her exchange herself for Peeta. These statements seem like fundamental betrayals of the struggle Katniss has been growing into throughout the series, but film makes Katniss’ sincerity disturbingly unclear, especially in light of the ambiguity of her political stance earlier in the film. Is she just telling Snow what she believes he wants to hear, or is she truly so desperate to save Peeta that she will sacrifice the revolution itself for his safety?

No matter which is the case, Snow’s answer – “It’s the things we love most that destroy us.” – comes across as an interpretation of the outcome of Katniss’ efforts that, strangely, the film seems to validate. Pushed by Capitol torture into a distorted reality where Katniss is a dangerous enemy, the star-crossed lovers’ reunion results in an extended, disturbing sequence where Peeta wrestles Katniss to the ground, violently choking her. She escapes the encounter, and in a final sequence, watches him in a psychiatric ward, her reflection imposed over his thrashing body on the glass that separates them, as President Coin announces the successful outcome of the rescue at a political rally. This final, ghostly image of Katniss’ tortured face is a far cry from the expression of defiance that closed Catching Fire.

This sequence might have played differently had Katniss’ efforts to protect Peeta been only part of her focus in Mockingjay: Part One, or if this plot point had only been the midpoint of an adaptation of the entire novel. But as an ending, even to a film that promises a sequel, it seems bizarrely punitive and, frankly, horrifying. The film has spent two hours leading its audience alongside Katniss as she gives all her energy to Peeta’s rescue, only to tell both her and us that not only have her efforts been useless, but her loving sacrifices have only served to weaken her against her enemies. Of course, part of the rationale for this is to set up challenges for Katniss and Peeta to overcome in the next instalment. But the film should be able to offer a narrative experience that stands on its own and can thematically justify its existence, particularly if we’re meant to pay upwards of twelve dollars to see it. Obviously, we are not supposed to agree completely with President Snow, who is essentially the embodiment of pure evil in the film’s universe. But the story’s mixed messages offer us little alternative to conceding his victory.

The success of The Hunger Games’ franchise and its dystopian imitators such as the Divergent series or the CW’s The 100 seems to suggest that Hollywood is catching on to the idea that young audiences are willing to pay to see complex female leads and meatier social criticism. Mockingjay’s marketing implores us to embrace it as a gritty critique of oppression, propaganda, and war, and a feminist blockbuster led by a powerful teenage girl with more on her mind than romance (think about both propaganda-inspired posters and Jennifer Lawrence’s press tour pullquotes about how Katniss has too much on her plate to worry about who her boyfriend is). The problem with Mockingjay is not that either Katniss’ trauma or her love interest make her an uninteresting or weak female character. It’s that the film hypocritically champions its own success as female-driven, serious social critique, while in reality treating both these aspects with little depth or care.

As Mockingjay: Part Two looms on the horizon, we should remember that Hollywood’s willingness to deliver stories packaged to appeal to certain kinds of social consciousness does not mean filmmakers will engage beyond a surface level with the issues they use to sell their films. Teenage girls, as much as any audience, deserve complicated female characters, coherent and responsible social criticism, and well-crafted narratives in their media. As critical-minded viewers, we need to continue to demand and support substantive stories within and outside mainstream Hollywood and continue to identify those movies that only lay trendy glosses over empty promises.

Charlotte Orzel will take KA Applegate over Suzanne Collins any day of the week. Her interests include YA war stories, film exhibition, marriage dramas, and making fun of True Detective. She is a Master’s student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Montreal and tweets about life and film at @histoirienne.

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers

They’re complicated women who have both scarred each other over the years, and there’s no getting past that easily. But they both try. And in trying, we get a better picture of who they are as human beings. Like I said in the beginning, there’s something so valuable in seeing a character like Emily who is, unequivocally, a bad mother also be a good person. Because she is a good person. Sometimes. Mostly.

Three generations of Gilmores: Rory, Emily, and Lorelai.

This guest post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog, Kiss My Wonder Woman, and appears now as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers. Cross-posted with permission.

It’s sad, but it’s true. When we talk about “bad mothers” we almost always limit our discussion, intentionally or not, to talking about mothers from lower income families, single mothers, mothers of color, and other women whose motherhood is deeply impacted by the difficulty of their ability to provide for their children.

Most of the “bad mommies” we’ve seen depicted on television fit this trend too, being disproportionately women of color with low incomes and frequently without a parenting partner. It would be really easy to look at the media, especially television, and come to the conclusion that the only real kind of bad mother is a poor one.

It’s arguably even more rare, though, to see a depiction or discussion of a woman who is a bad mother but not necessarily a bad person. A woman who, for all of her faults and genuine failures as a parent, is still a human being with wants and needs. In other words, sometimes women can be bad at being mothers but halfway decent at being people. We accept this readily when talking about fathers, but when it comes to mothers, it’s like we all freeze up. A bad mother must be a bad person. End of story.

Naturally, this isn’t true.

Lorelai and Emily at a Mother-Daughter fashion show. — Lorelai and Emily at a mother-daughter fashion show.

The truth is that reality is much more complex and difficult to understand than we like to admit. It’s so much easier to frame little bubbles of belief around ourselves and only pay attention to the narratives that affirm our understanding of the world. Motherhood is disproportionately valued in our society, which leads to an understanding that women are evaluated on the basis of whether or not we are mothers. If we are mothers, then we seem to think that our value is determined by whether or not we’re good at it. We are the products of our uteruses, and apparently nothing else.

But this misses the vast complexity of human experience, and, clearly, devalues women into walking incubators. And when all we see are narratives that enforce this, narratives that equivalence good motherhood with valid personhood, it’s hard to shake the idea that women are only good if we are good mothers.

So, with all of that in mind, let’s talk about Emily Gilmore, a fictional women who, glory of glories, managed to be both a bad mother and an interesting person, all without losing her genuine humanity. While much ink has been spilled over the years about Gilmore Girls and the unconventional relationship between mother and daughter Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) Gilmore, the undiscovered country of the show is in the characterization of Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop), Lorelai’s mother.

Emily Gilmore hits rock bottom on the rocks.

Emily Gilmore could have very easily been a caricature of a certain type of society matron, but she’s saved from that fate by the excellent writing of Amy Shermer-Palladino and the fantastic acting of Kelly Bishop. An upper class woman concerned primarily with image and status, Emily’s not a very nice person when we meet her in season one. She’s angry and bitter and cutting and devious, the sort of woman you would back away from slowly at a party. A running joke is made out of her inability to keep a maid employed (because she keeps firing them for tiny infractions), but the reality is that Emily Gilmore is a deeply unpleasant woman to be around.

The premise of the show actually makes it very clear that Lorelai has no real intention of pursuing a relationship with her mother. The first episode tells us that Lorelai hasn’t spoken to her parents in 15 years or so, having run away at 16, shortly after giving birth to her daughter. Lorelai has been living in isolation from her mother simply so that Emily could not control her life. The only reason she goes back to her parents is because her daughter, Rory, has been accepted to a prestigious private school, and Lorelai lacks the financial resources to pay the tuition.

This in and of itself is a pretty stark statement about the level of their relationship. Lorelai will only speak to her mother when the only other alternative is letting down her own child. That’s bad. It’s also understandable. The show never lets Emily off the hook or tells us she was secretly an amazing mother. While it does make clear that Emily has always cared about Lorelai more than Lorelai perhaps realized, it also gives us lots of evidence that Emily was an awful parent. She was manipulative, controlling, overly critical, and tried to micromanage her daughter’s every move.

What makes Gilmore Girls a great show, though, is that it gives us Emily Gilmore in all of her flawed parental glory, and doesn’t try to excuse or redeem it. Instead, it shows us a story where Lorelai and Emily come to appreciate each other for who they are. Emily doesn’t magically become a better parent, but she does become more and more aware of how terrible a parent she is, and she starts to want to change.

In other words, it’s not so much that Emily Gilmore is a terrible mother that I like, it’s that she’s a terrible mother who realizes she is. And, upon realizing that she has no relationship with her daughter at all, seeks to fix that.

It’s not an easy road, and the show, to its credit, does not give Emily much slack. She has to work for that relationship. Lorelai does too. They’re complicated women who have both scarred each other over the years, and there’s no getting past that easily. But they both try. And in trying, we get a better picture of who they are as human beings. Like I said in the beginning, there’s something so valuable in seeing a character like Emily who is, unequivocally, a bad mother also be a good person. Because she is a good person. Sometimes. Mostly.

At the very least, she’s a fully realized person. Emily Gilmore has all the faults and foibles that real people have. She has enemies and friends and flaws and spectacular good qualities. She yearns for a closer relationship with her husband but has no idea how to get it. She desperately wants to be a good mother, but utterly lacks the tools or understanding on how to relate to her child. She’s complicated, and I love that.

The Gilmores gather to celebrate Rory’s graduation.

It is also worth mentioning, however, that our understanding of Emily Gilmore really does come down along class lines. While it’s considerably less common to see a depiction of a white, upper class woman as a bad mother, it is more common to see women like Emily Gilmore given the benefit of the doubt, both by society and by the media. Still, that doesn’t make the show any less valuable as a depiction of the complexities of motherhood. Just, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

The main thing I want to get at here is simply this: women are not defined solely by our ability to parent. Some women are bad mothers. They just are. Whether because they are too proud to seek help or lack the emotional capacity or simply don’t see how their choices are affecting their children, some women are bad at being parents. And that’s important to admit. If we can’t see that, then we can’t understand women fully as people.

But more than that, if we can’t understand that a woman can be both a bad mother and still a valid, valuable human being, then we have no right to say that we understand the humanity of women. Characters like Emily Gilmore can help us see this, but ultimately it’s up to us. We have to admit the complexity of the world around us if we want it to get any better.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and the search for gluten-free baked goods.

Carey Mulligan on Her Feminist Character in ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’

Following are highlights from the press conference with Carey Mulligan, where among other things, she talked about her character, her collaborative work with her co-stars and director, the elaborate costumes, and how expert she became handling sheep.

Carey Mulligan (photo by Paula Schwartz) — Carey Mulligan. (Photo by Paula Schwartz)

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Carey Mulligan took time off last week from her duties in the Broadway revival of David Hare’s 1995 drama, Skylight, to promote her new film, Far From the Madding Crowd, based on the 1874 Thomas Hardy novel. In Skylight, for which Mulligan just earned a Tony nomination, the English actress plays Kyra, a teacher in an urban London school who struggles to be independent and lead a life of purpose when her former, much older lover, a wealthy restaurateur (Bill Nighy), tries to worm his way back into her life after his wife dies.

In Far From the Madding Crowd, Mulligan plays Bathsheba Everdene, a country girl who inherits her uncle’s farm, and takes a crash course in how to shear sheep, plant crops and run a manor. Bathsheba’s last name sounds familiar because it inspired the naming of the feminine heroine of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen. Like Katniss, Bathsheba is willful and independent. When she’s forced to behave in ways contrary to her nature, Bathsheba also wears elaborate costumes, with corsets and cinched waists that restrain and confine her and seem fetishistic.

Despite the different historical periods, the women Mulligan plays in Skylight and Far From the Madding Crowd, also have similar concerns; they are complicated, ambitious and brainy women who struggle to find their identity and place in the world, even as men and society try to control them.

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg with a script by David Nicholls, the film fixes on the darkness and perversity just below the surface of restrained and repressed Victorian life. Vinterberg – just as he showed in his last film, The Hunt – finds nature as beautiful and powerful as it is unfeeling and scary. Charlotte Bruus Christensen filmed the luscious, sun-soaked vistas of the English countryside, filled with enough sheep to make anyone consider becoming a vegetarian, particularly after one tragic sequence involving cliffs.

Practical, stubborn, smart, sharp-tongued – even irritating at times – Bathsheba struggles to be independent in a world in which a women’s life is circumscribed by society and custom. While marriage isn’t even on her radar, Victorian society pushes her to find a husband. Soon a trio of very different suitors, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge, propose marriage. Shocking in her day as much for her sex drive as for her independent lifestyle, Bathsheba chooses for love and desire rather than security or advancement. She is modern and relatable in her pursuits, drives, flaws and contradictions. She chooses the wrong guy when the right one is right under her nose.

Carey Mulligan and Matthias Shoenaerts. (Photo by Paula Schwartz)

Can you talk about how Bathsheba is unique for the time she’s living in?

Carey Mulligan: I’d never read the book. I still haven’t. When I read it, that’s what I was most excited about, that it was a story that started with a woman who turned down a proposal of marriage and a good one… a really good one in our film.

It’s a young woman in a Victorian classic that isn’t looking to be married and isn’t looking to be defined by a man. It hasn’t even crossed her mind. That’s what was so exciting. That’s obviously not the viewpoint of most women during that time and throughout the whole story, she sort of enjoys bucking social convention, being different. That’s who she is. There’s so much to her. She’s incredibly complicated and stubborn, fallible, spontaneous and impetuous and all these things mixed together.

Do you find that there’s a similarity between this character and Kyra Hollis, who you’re currently playing on Broadway?

There’s definitely a similarity between them. The thing about Bathsheba is that she’s so extraordinary in her time but Kyra isn’t that extraordinary in modern times – so I think it’s that Bathsheba feels so contemporary. They both have a real drive. Neither of them wants to be defined by men but both have the capacity to fall head over heels in love.

They’re both really strong yet flawed people, which is rare as an actress to get to play.

This kind of period romance has been done quite a bit. How did you make sure that the performance differed from others before it?

When you get to work with actors like this (she refers to her co-stars). There’s a certain security to that. Especially when you make an idiot of yourself. One of my improvisations with Michael was my interview to be a governess and he was the master of the house. It was the first time I was ever acted with Michael Sheen. It was terrifying and at the same time it was also brilliant because after that I could do anything in front of him and it wasn’t scary. The same (happened) with Matthias. All of that was good preparation.

Also, (there were) so many long conversations with Thomas Vinterberg and David Nicholls. We had an awful lot of time in comparison with other projects I’ve done and we were able to hash things out over and over and over again. [Laughs] I was really annoying and we came to a point where we were on set and it was a complete collaboration between all of our ideas for the story and what we wanted to do.

Carey Mulligan. (Photo by Hosoki Nobuhiro)

This is a character with so many sides to her. How do you think that was reflected in the clothing, hair and makeup choices?

That was a conversation with Janet Patterson, our costume designer, and Charlie Rogers, who did the hair and makeup. Working with Thomas and working on David’s version of the story we never wanted it to feel like a buttoned up costume drama with people wearing outfits and looking uncomfortable. This was about real people. The way that Thomas shoots it’s all about the performances. The camera moves with you and it’s all very relaxed on set.

The makeup and the hair, because we were outside all the time, it couldn’t get ruined immediately by being outside. It had to be durable and functional as well.

Skylight has been on hiatus for a week while you promote the film. Can you speak about taking a break from the show to do press?

We had a hiatus from Skylight so that we could do press in London. That was just the generosity of the producers. They knew well in advance when this film was coming out and we’re all so excited about it and proud of it that we wanted to be able to really do some good press junkets [Laughs].

It’s just a headspace break I suppose. When you do a play, you do it for a long run, I took it as an opportunity to take a break from the play and enjoy hanging out with these guys. Then coming back to the play, you kind have more energy in a way because you’ve been away from it for a week because plays can get a bit relentless.

How modern was life on set? Did you stay immersed in the time period between takes?

No, I took it with me like you take your homework home and tried to learn my lines for the next day. (Laughs) I’m not a method actor. When you’re in every day you feel a sort of weight of responsibility playing a very famous character, you obviously are thinking about it a lot but it wasn’t a character thing that I was carrying with me… We used our phones on set sometimes. [Laughs]

You’ve been very discerning about the characters you’ve built and brought to life. Bathsheba is a character who has influenced the modern kickass woman on film. Would you consider playing an action hero?

I don’t know. I would never say never to anything. The decisions I’ve made over the last couple of years have been driven by the characters and by the script and by the director. This was a perfect marriage of all of those things. I wasn’t really looking to do another period drama. I’ve done a lot of films that have been period recently and I did a lot of Austen (Pride and Prejudice) and Dickens (Bleak House) when I was younger. This was too good an opportunity not to work out.

I don’t rule anything out. I just think I’m always drawn to really strong characters, particularly characters who have a lot to them. I’m not really interested in playing two-dimensional people. But I think what’s amazing about Bathsheba is how complex and complicated and mixed up and strong and resilient. She’s so many different things in one, and that’s what I’m driven by and looking for and if that came along in the form of some action hero, then of course that would be great… But it might not.

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.