Interview [Part 5]: 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 5, Misan considers the theme of gender in Belle:

Scott: Another theme in Belle is gender and the movie explores that theme primarily through the relationship of Dido and her ‘sister’ Elizabeth. Could you talk about how you look at the nature of that relationship and its role in the overall story?

Misan: The film started out as “Belle and Bette”. It’s the obvious thing looking at the painting. Their relationship and how it changes when they come out of the safe isolation of their childhood arcadia at Kenwood into the real world. They start off very close brought up as sisters. I made them so close in fact that when Elizabeth is to go to London she won’t go without Dido. This propels Dido into the outside world.

But the upturning of their expectations by Dido’s inheritance brings new strains to their relationship. This strain on their relationship was important to me. It forces Dido to look in a different way at her self and at Elizabeth. As Dido becomes more desirable and even desired, how will Elizabeth feel? I like that they love and support each other, but also that there is teenage rivalry. They are real girls. They are both learning what the real world is about and the shock of it tests their love for each other.

Then I became more and more intrigued by the third invisible person in that portrait — Lord Mansfield. He put the girls there, created the controlled arcadia they are painted against. He made that portrait happen and is as much stamped on that painting as they are.

As for the title of the film “Belle and Bette” later shortened to Belle, in fact they were never called that in their lifetime. It’s partly a sly play on the French “Beauty and the Beast” and part homage to Dido herself. She is beautiful. I had another reason though. Her baptismal record. This is a most intriguing document. It says she is the daughter of Bell and his Maria Bell, his wife. It is the only record on the page that has this defiant claim… his wife. It led me astray at first. Who is Bell? A servant in the household? But there is no other record of him. I now believe Bell was Lindsay. A pet name? An alias? And I believe he married her.

I loved this last little gesture of her mother as she had to give up her husband to a proper marriage in England and daughter to his family. Defiantly proclaiming her status. Not a slave on galley, not a reject but his wife. I thought this was too fanciful and I didn’t put it in the script. I was getting carried away. Reading too much. But recently, I saw research that has shown that the Mansfield’s bought her a house in Florida, and that Lindsay went and lived here with her and they had more children. My instinct was probably right! Anyway. She was Belle. For her beautiful mother and ‘Bell’ for her father.

A word of caution about gender though. Oppression based on gender was terrible and women were certainly not free but we must not take that analogy too far. Slavery was something else and the unique horrors of that must not be trivialized or diluted by overdoing the comparison.

Scott: It seems to me there are two love stories in Belle: Dido and young John Diviner, and Dido and Lord Mansfield. Is that a fair assessment?

Misan: Yes. It was important to me that Dido gets to see what love really is. It was important to me to have this two love stories so Dido could see what love was for her, (Lord Mansfield’s conditional love) and what love could be (Davinier’s unconditional love). She could compare the two and decide what she was worthy of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI1Zhlsjags

Scott: Could you describe how each of these two relationships was critical to Dido’s maturation?

Misan: Dido had to grow out of Lord Mansfield into Davinier and finally into herself. She had to throw away so many of the fixed rules she was brought up with. Change the fixed points in her solar system almost. Free herself.

My happy ending though was always that they end up together, not that she runs away and gives up being a Mansfield.

In the end, like Jane Austen, I wanted to have a happy ending where she and Davinier are accepted. My final scene was always Lord Mansfield welcoming him into the fold, not her running away or making that sort of stand. In real life after he died, she does seem to have run away. Not in my movie!

Scott: Likewise how did Dido impact the growth of the John Diviner character?

Misan: She turned him from an idealist into an abolitionist. From feeling something is right and doing something about it. I think being near her and that relationship made him much more militant. In Kenwood, he is grasping for right and wrong. In London, he is acting on those feelings.

Scott: Parallel to Dido’s personal story is a legal case of horrific nature: a massacre which took place on a slave ship “Zong” in 1781 in which 142 slaves were killed so the company that owned the slaves could collect insurance money. You’ve mentioned another legal case you considered focusing on. What was that and why did you choose the Zong case instead?

Misan: I did consider the Somersett case. It was really the obvious case because it actually had a greater impact at the time. 40,000 slaves were freed in England on one day. I went through several drafts with that as the case. The problem was Somersett himself, this lone African American man, a slave who educated himself in the law and took on the entire British establishment. He took on the world and won freedom not just for himself, but for every black person in England. He was such a big character there in London, his story overshadowed everyone — Mansfield, Davinier, and especially Belle. There came a crossroads where the decision was either go with Somersett or write Belle’s story.

Scott: As with almost all of the major characters in Belle, Mansfield himself goes through a personal evolution. Could you describe how he changes, how that change is manifested in the plot, and Dido’s role in Mansfield’s metamorphosis?

Misan: Lord Mansfield is a metaphor for England. This country that saw itself as enlightened and peaceful and civilized compared to so many places. Their prosperity depended on this barbaric trade. I think they thought all the wonderful art and Georgian architecture and learning this trade paid for was what defined them, and as long as they kept it away and were personally decent to the black people they met here in England, then they could live with it. In the end, they found that it wasn’t the art that defined them, it was the slave trade. And when they looked at themselves in the mirror that is what they saw.

At the beginning, he likes really himself in his gorgeous house. He loves Dido and he loves England. He starts off in control of his world. He makes the laws at home and in the wider world. But you can’t control things like love, or even people. Slowly his ability to control events is eroded, first by letting John in, then by letting Dido out and then the Zong judgment. The film is his frantic attempt to regain control. And it’s his journey to realizing that he can’t that is important. He comes to realize he is defined by his actions, not his intentions. He cannot control the outcome. Not at home or in the courtroom. All he can do is what is right, let justice be done though heavens may fall.

In the end it wasn’t about the humanity of those slaves, or even Dido’s humanity. It was about his own.

Reading his legal judgments in his original notebooks, which I did, you get an inkling of his journey. Here was a man who made such dry legal arguments, the father of mercantile law, who every once in a while made these romantic judgments. For me, sprung from those legal notebooks as character. I heard more that read his voice.

Scott: Now that the movie is rolling out into movie theaters, what ideas or messages do you hope moviegoers who see Belle will come away with?

Misan: Its about empowerment for me. Learning to love who you are and demanding love and respect.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Misan shares some thoughts about the screenwriting craft.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, 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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