Revolution Onscreen: A Salon chat with Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan

Reviewed by Claire Bachmann. Viewed at the AFI Fest 2015.

Director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan for the critically acclaimed movie “Suffragette”, starring Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep, sat down to talk about the casting process and how they decided what “feel” they were giving the movie.

First thing Sarah and Abi talked about was that this was a movie over 10 years in the making, and a script that had been completely tossed out due to suggestions made by Carey Mulligan – who had a huge influence on how this film was made – and then remade again to fit the feel of the movie better. While the casting process came easy to them, they had always had Carey Mulligan in mind for the lead character, Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham Carter came along after the beginning of making it. While on set, the filming process had been much different in that, they kept the camera running for as long as possible, allowing the actresses to explore their characters more extensively by being in character for longer than is normal.

The feel of the film goes along with how they shot the film with the long takes, allowing hardly any time in between shots so the actresses would continue to stay in character. There is a clear color pallet used in the film, mainly muted colors in the outfits and backdrops, nothing ostentatious or frivolous from the time period.They both touched on how this was an almost exclusively female movie, adding that because of that there was certainly a different but good feel to the movie and the filming of it. While this was an extremely interesting panel, they cut it 45 minutes short for an unknown reason. Very great information received from both Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan about the creative process of “Suffragette”.