Maggie Gyllenhaal Says Her Making ‘The Lost Daughter’ Wouldn’t Have Been Possible ‘Without Being A Mother Myself’
etcanada.comWriting and directing “The Lost Daughter” meant tapping into personal experience for Maggie Gyllenhaal. The filmmaker is on the new cover of W magazine, and in the issue she opens up about getting behind the camera to adapt Elena Ferrante’s novel for the acclaimed film. “I think people respond to being told the truth, especially about something taboo,” she says of the reaction to the film. “I had never seen so many of these feelings, not just about mothering, but about being a woman, expressed before, and I found that really exciting — and disturbing.” READ MORE: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Lost Daughter’ Wins Big At Toronto Film Critics Association Awards Before making the film, Gyllenhaal wrote a letter to Ferrante to ask for the rights to adapt her novel. “It’s one thing to read these things that we’ve agreed not to talk about in a book,” she says. “It’s disturbing and comforting at the same time, but we’re still alone in our rooms with this secret knowledge.
I thought it would be a really radical proposition to put it up on a screen in a communal space, where you might be sitting next to your mother or daughter, and actually hear these things spoken out loud.
Then something’s really being shattered. That’s what I had proposed to her in the letter.” Bringing the book to the screen wasn’t a simple task, as Gyllenhaal explains, “The challenge of the book was very much like breaking a scene down as an actor.
You have a text and you’re like, ‘Okay, these are the words, but what is the underlying, more interesting event of the scene, and how can you articulate that cinematically without ever saying it out loud?’” READ MORE: Maggie Gyllenhaal And Jimmy Fallon Struggle To Play Hits On Random Instruments In ‘Tonight
Read more on etcanada.com
