Kari Skogland: The Stone Angel

By Jenny Siddle

“What we need to understand as Canadians is that we have a very rich culture, and culture only exists so long as you tell the stories. Once you stop telling and re-telling those stories, it disappears.” - Kari Skogland

It takes a courageous filmmaker to take on the task of adapting any novel to the silver screen, let alone a classic Canadian novel such as Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel. As many of us probably remember from high school English class, the dense 300 pages of this novel spill over with life/death imagery, Biblical symbolism and frequent flashbacks. Indeed, a few filmmakers have tried to cinematically encapsulate crotchety old Hagar Shipley’s tumultuous 92 year-old life, yet all have failed. Until now. Canadian director Kari Skogland has taken on that audacious task in her film of the same name, opening in theatres across Canada, Mother’s Day Weekend (May 9).

So how does one go about adapting such a timeless novel into a two-hour film without letting those seven haunting words linger in the back of their subconsciousness? “It’s never as good as the book.”

“I tried not to let the material overwhelm me,” says the Toronto native over the phone from L.A. “I was trying to see what was cinematic rather than paying homage to Margaret Laurence. It’s a hard book, I didn’t want people to feel the weight of the epic quality of the story.”

The film opens with ninety-two year old Hagar Shipley (played brilliantly by Ellen Burstyn) in the back seat of her son, Marvin's car, complaining about her inconsistent bowel movements. Did I mention that this is considered to be classic Canadiana? She quits complaining long enough to realize that she is unknowingly being chauffeured to her own symbolic death - the nursing home. During the next 115 minutes, Hagar, in all of her dementia, escapes to an old cabin in search of her past. This immediately initiates a myriad of flashbacks recounting “her repressed passion…in coming to terms with her sexuality, with love and with God.”

“I just think Ellen Burstyn is North America’s national treasure,” says Skogland about the Academy Award winning actress. “I was thrilled to have her on board.” As it turns out, Burstyn had been re-evaluating her own life by working on her own personal memoirs at the time she was approached to do the film. “She read the script and really understood where [Hagar] was at. The minute she read it she jumped on board.”

The transitions between past and present in the film are seamless as we revisit Hagar from her beginnings as a small tomboy wreaking havoc in her upper middle class home, to a head-strong young woman (Christine Horne) who marries the antithesis of her own father in as much out of spite, as out of love. Horne, a stage actress, turns in a stellar performance, especially considering it's her first on camera role ever.

“I had to call up my investors and say, ‘so here’s my plan. I have this girl [Horne] who has never done anything before and I want to hang the entire movie on her.’ That was a little terrifying,” laughs Skogland, recounting her casting decision. “She did a brilliant job.”

Not only was The Stone Angel a hit at the Vancouver International Film Festival last September, but it was wonderfully received as the opening gala presentation a few weeks ago at Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival, where Skogland was named the festival’s Honoured Director. As an advocate of women in film and television arts, Skogland appreciates outlets such as the Female Eye Film Festival and worldwide organizations such as Women In Film and Television, but admits that things haven’t exactly become easier for women filmmakers over the last decade.

“Unfortunately, the numbers aren’t particularly encouraging,” laments Skogland. “Less than ten percent of films are being directed by women, and that hasn’t really changed. It’s a hard road that we choose to be on.”

Despite the gender statistics, Skogland’s career is truly heating up. Hot off the heels of The Stone Angel, the Canadian director is currently in postproduction of a new film starring Sir Ben Kingsley and recent film sensation Jim Sturgess called Fifty Dead Men Walking, set to premiere sometime in late 2008/early 2009.

Fifty Dead Men Walking is the shocking true story of Martin McGartland, a British informer hired to spy on the IRA during the turbulent times in Belfast in the 1980s. McGartland works his way up the ranks of the IRA while saving lives in the process, until one fateful day his true identity is exposed, thus allowing him to become captured and tortured. “It was very compelling because it was a time in history in Belfast during the Irish troubles where it was very murky…it was tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys,” says Skogland. “[McGartland’s story] to me was an interesting conundrum because it ultimately came down to the individual and how you view your personal ethics and responsibility to community [in a time of war].”

While filming on location in Belfast, Skogland couldn’t help but admire the Irish patriotism exuding from their history. “One thing that struck me about the Irish is that they tell and re-tell their stories and are tremendously proud. Anything that is green is theirs.” When comparing this cultural nationalism to her own country, Skogland thinks it is time for Canadians to wake up.

“The only way to hang on to our culture is by supporting it from within. [We as Canadians] have this horrific chip on our shoulders about what is made here in Canada, and that’s just got to change. We make some wonderful pictures here in Canada…and just as the Hollywood machine makes some wonderful pictures, they make some terrible ones as well,” claims Skogland. “If it’s under a Maple Leaf, we should be bloody proud of it. It’s our story.”

Whether you read Laurence’s The Stone Angel growing up, or whether you are about to be introduced to it in the theatres for the first time, one thing all of us as Canadians can agree on is that it is our story, told and retold by us. And if you are anything like me, you won’t walk out of that theatre comparing what the film lacked or the book gained; you will walk out thinking, “I really would like to read that book again.” And that can only be a testament to a great adaptation.

Check out the trailer to The Stone Angel