Interview [Part 3]: Misan Sagay, Screenwriter, “Belle”

Misan Sagay is a screenwriter whose credits include The Secret Laughter of Women, starring Colin Firth, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, starring Halle Berry. Misan’s most recent writing project is Belle, an historical drama starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing the title role.

Today in Part 3, Misan delves into her Jane Austenesque take on the story for Belle:

Scott: The movie Belle is a social critique, an historical saga, a romance, and a legal drama, all the while centered on a young woman Dido trying to find her place in the world. Is there one of those storylines you thought of as the central narrative point or did you look at all of them as co-equals?

Misan: Dido’s journey was always central to me. How she goes from a child to woman. How she goes from accepting the limits placed on her to demanding her rights.

And her romance. The central love story was set from early on. At first the screenplay centered much more on the relationship between the girl in the painting. But as soon as I decided on the Zong case as the case to focus on, the girls relationship needed to be cut back to let that central triangle Lord Mansfield — Belle — Davinier breathe. It was hard at first because the girls relationship was much beloved by some of the Producers and the appearance of a more political stand with the Zong was hard for them. I had to take them with me and that wasn’t easy.

It is a legal drama of sorts because it centers on the verdict. But all the argument takes place outside the courtroom. The fault line between Lord Mansfield and John Davinier is that Lord Mansfield sees the law in terms of statutes and John sees it in terms of morality. They each lay out their stall in the scene where John is banished. “What is the purpose of the law?” That line has remained unchanged in that same scene since Davinier became an abolitionist and not a valet. So whether Davinier is a priest, a butcher or a lawyer, the essence of his character is that he preaches right and wrong. We know that his preaching is his essence because in 200 reviews, he is referred to as Vicar’s son or abolitionist. He has been referred to “Preachy” for better or worse. Hardly any mention he’s a lawyer because it isn’t his essence.

Much of the social critique is gathered from the action of the film. Looking at a society that is funded by slavery. I hammer this point home with the background I place the action against, slavery and what pays for it always together. So Dido meets John again at Vauxhall pleasure garden. He is now a passionate abolitionist and he is working with his friends to influence Lord Mansfield’s judgment. That scene, cut from an earlier draft for concerns about cost, reappears in the final film. There in the midst of Georgian splendor, John speaks out passionately and eloquently about the morality of the slave trade, and there, their relationship rekindles. Dido begins to sneak out to meet John with his friends and finds out about the Zong but this causes a deterioration in her relationship with Lord Mansfield leading to duels at the silver laden breakfast table. Domesticity and slavery, always joined. John accosts Lord Mansfield and points out the effects on Dido if he finds for the slave traders. As a Vicar’s son (therefore a gentleman), he can dine with the family while she can’t. But he’s not an aristocrat and he has no money, so he can’t marry into the family or have the cheek to stop his Lordship in the street. I use John to poke fun at the social mores. In the end, Lord Mansfield makes the right judgment: Dido rejects her aristocratic tutor and chooses John.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzIAhjkCWic

Scott: As you’ve noted, Belle has the feel of a Jane Austen type story. How conscious were you of writing a story in that vein? Did that generate any pressure for you, to live up to those type of stories, or perhaps did it inspire your creative process?

Misan: There are only two girls in the painting. Who else to include in the story and screenplay is a creative decision. By centering the story around their young love affairs made it a Jane Austen story.

I set out to make a Jane Austenesque drama, but not a pastiche. To celebrate the genre, but also to subvert it. Jane Austen with a black heroine. What characterizes a Jane Austen story is it’s minute attention to detail about day to day life. Everything takes place against the background of domesticity. You have to get that right. Austen was writing 30–40 years later in more louche regency times. It was important I got the small things right. But I found it hard to find original sources from that time.

Writing the domestic saga, the women was actually the most difficult part. History used to be written by men so women are often absent from the historical record. Then I managed to track down the letters and diaries of the Marchioness Grey of Wrest Park in Hertfordshire, in a book decades out of print. This was a household very similar to the Mansfield’s. Grey’s husband, the Earl of Hardwicke was the Attorney General at the same time as Lord Mansfield was Chief Justice. Hardwicke gave the infamous “Yorke-Talbot opinion” that legalized slavery in England. Lord Mansfield’s Somersett ruling overturned it. They were adversaries yet their backgrounds and home life were very similar. This intimate first hand account of this household, written by a woman, the equivalent of Lady Mansfield, gave me a real picture of the daily lives of the women and prototypes for Lady Mansfield and Lady Mary.

So I created Lady Mansfield, inspired by Jemima Grey, as wise and womanly. Characters like her don’t each have a lot of screen time and you have to establish them quickly. So though Lady Mansfield is resistant to Belle we warm to her, Lady M, immediately because the first thing she does is to take care of Belle. There in the midst of the shock of Belle’s arrival she asks for her to be given food. It’s a moment that says everything about her. I had her in that one gesture. I also made her marriage to Lord Mansfield a true marriage, (like the Hardwicke marriage where she was really his helpmate.) They are surprisingly equal, even modern in their relationship. They clearly love each other and their nieces. Lady Mansfield is the more pragmatic of the two. He is emotional while she is practical. She is the first to spot the problems Dido’s presence will bring, “Marriage?”

Lady Mary was a challenge because she represents what Dido was destined to become. The keys to the household are to be passed to Belle, a symbol of eternal spinsterhood., another one of those functional symbols I like to create. Yet, she had to be sympathetic and loveable even though we must never want her fate to be Dido’s. Lady Mary rose most clearly from the Grey letters, a kind of governess for the girls, slightly ridiculous with her dislike of the French (England was threatened with invasion by Napoleon at the time) yet she is also true.

The Mansfield household consisted of many people at different times, including two other wards. The limiting of it to just these two women was an important creative choice I made. They portrayed very starkly the two paths for Belle, happy honorable marriage with an equal or twilight life of spinsterhood living for other people. There was one last option. An unhappy bitter marriage leading to shallowness and cruelty. The insecurity of women’s lives where they have to leave the family home if their husband dies is a theme in Jane Austen that I explored here, too. The ever present heir Elizabeth’s father Lord Stormont who has already thrown his own daughter out. What will happen to Lady Mansfield, Lady Mary and Dido when he inherits?

There was always a villainess in the mold of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in “Pride and Prejudice”. A shallow unprincipled snob. But it’s more serious than that. She represents the central hypocrisy of the slave trade. Black people did not become slaves because they were inferior. They were captured, then deemed to be inferior in order to justify the inhumanity of their treatment. It was all about money. Lady Ashford ’s racism is just money. I think this is an important message especially for black children who might wonder why it happened to us. Was there something wrong with us? No. It was all about money.

I felt perhaps most pressure in terms of John. Making a romantic hero to live up to Jane Austen.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Misan discusses some themes in Belle related to the issue of race.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Misan is repped by Independent Talent Group.

Twitter: @MisanSagayFilm.

For an interview with the movie’s director Amma Asante, go here.

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