Mia Wasikowska fills out the screen in Kuba Dorabialski’s “Agata the Writer.” Metaphorically and figuratively, as one especially arresting sequence shows her in close-up looking directly at the audience and recounting the rest of the story.
“Luckily, when I’m doing something, I don’t think too much about how it’s going to be perceived. Kuba sent me some references, which I thought were really interesting, and it felt organic. But then, when I was watching the scene, I thought: ‘Ok. That’s enough of my face’!”
Known for blockbusters like “Alice in Wonderland” and high-profiles dramas “Stoker” or “Jane Eyre,” Wasikowska has been pursuing arthouse fare in recent years.
“I was really excited about making a film that didn’t follow a typical narrative structure. I feel like we have tunnel vision about how to tell a story and make a film,” notes Wasikowska. She also executive produced the film.
“This brings back the sense of exploration. I’m very proud it was made in a market that’s increasingly myopic about how it’s done.”
A Whitefalk Films and Produktion Productions production – sold by French sales company MMM Film Sales – sees Wasikowska as Agata, a Polish-Australian writer who arrives in Sarajevo to write about the war. She wants to speak to the survivors, but they question her motives. Not to mention, weird artworks start to mysteriously disappear from the house where she’s staying.
Dorabialski wanted to combine cinema and literature in the film.
“How do you make these two very different but also very interconnected forms of expression work? Reading is a solitary practice, and we experience cinema collectively,” he states.
He was been back and forth about the title pretty much until the premiere in Venice.
“And then, suddenly, I felt affection for it. I have a lot of affection also for writers too. The essence of everything I’m interested in is this very particular magic of literature. But where it falls short is silence and stillness. Even a novel that explores silence has to fill that void with language. Cinema has the audience in chains, dictating how long stillness lasts,” he says.
“I think these two forms complement each other beautifully.”
Dorabialski comes from the world of video art, where “formal experimentation is not only kind of acceptable – it’s necessary.”
“Cinema felt really exciting to me precisely because it has rules. There’s a definite beginning and end time; there’s a dark room and a screen. We’re just brains in a void. I was excited by some of that formal restriction.”
Wasikowska and Dorabialski both have Polish roots, but in the film, Agata heads to Sarajevo instead.
“I was interested in the idea of Slavic identity outside Eastern Europe and what it means to be part of this linguistic ethnic group,” he explains.
“Much of my work has examined historical similarities throughout Eastern Europe, politically and linguistically. Bosnia and Poland are about as far apart as two Slavic cultures could be, but the concept of Eastern Europe is formed from outside that territory. It’s always the West and the Anglophone world looking at this region and othering this group. I guess I’m playing the insider-outsider game here.”
He knew that Wasikowska would be the right Agata.
“Partly it’s because she has this Polish-Australian connection, but primarily because of the way she chooses and approaches her roles. I knew she could handle the challenge of playing someone who’s very pensive, restrained, quiet and detached.”
He adds: “Even in the final act of the film, where there’s nothing but Mia’s face, we’re still listening to the story and engaging with its content. Every time I watch it, I notice all the small decisions she made that give depth to her expressions.”
Wasikowska hasn’t really explored her roots before. Edward Zwick’s “Defiance,” about a Jewish underground resistance movement, came the closest.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to do that too much. But just from growing up, it’s very familiar to me,” she says.
“My mum and grandma were immigrants, and I observed their experience of trying to find belonging while being nostalgic about Poland. I’ve also traveled back to Poland many times. I connected with that in the script, and with Kuba. I understood the search for belonging and the feeling of being in between cultures even when somewhere feels familiar.”
That’s Agata’s struggle as well, as she’s desperately trying to figure out how to write about a conflict she hasn’t experienced. And whether it even makes sense.
“To me, what’s meaningful is the intention of trying to understand other people and things we haven’t lived through. That’s what it means to be human. It’s our responsibility to try to understand each other,” says Wasikowska.
And, according to Dorabialski, artists have a responsibility to respond to the world in which they live.
“It’s not like you go to church and all your sins are forgiven just because you’ve made an artwork about Gaza. But shouldn’t we expect art to create change? I’m not convinced that it does, especially in any kind of lasting, meaningful way. But artists have to do it anyway.”