Movie Screening - " Vita and Virginia" by Chanya Button

 Hello friends!

I am going to discuss the thinking activity on Movie Screening - "Vita and Virginia" by Chanya Button given by Vaidehi Hariyani Ma'am. 

About Film :-

This film was released in 2018 written and directed by Chanya Button. Starring Gemma Arterton as Vita Sackville-West Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia Woolf. Whole story line leads to the setting of the 1920s, the story of the love affair between socialite Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf. This element of her life forced her to write and finally she shaped her last novel of her literary career by the very popular novel, 'Orlando:A Biography' published in 11 October 1928.

How far do you feel that Orlando is influenced by Vita and Virginia’s love affair? Does it talk only about that or do you find anything else too?

The relationship of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West has gone down in literary history, and even today it holds a fascination, epitomising the allure of the unconventional, the bohemian, the slightly eccentric and exotic.

On December 15, 1922, Virginia Woolf recorded in her diary that she had met “the lovely aristocratic Sackville-West last night at Clive’s. Not much to my severe taste … all the supple ease of the aristocracy, but not the wit of the artist.” 

She was, of course, writing of Vita, the woman who would go on to become her lover, friend, and confidante.

Their affair has inspired biographies, a West End play, and most recently, a 2018 film. But none have come close to capturing the vibrant nuances and dynamics of their personalities, or the subtleties of a relationship that was more emotional than physical and that lasted until Virginia’s death in 1941.

Who do you think is confused about their identity Vita or Virginia? Explain with illustrations

Vita and Virginia identity. Both confuse her identity. By the time she met Virginia, Vita was thirty years old and an established author, having published several volumes of poetry and fiction with more commercial than literary success.

Virginia was ten years older, and had published three novels and survived three major bouts of insanity. The age difference and the apparent emotional fragility did not deter Vita, however, whose first impressions were far more favourable than Virginia’s. Soon after their first meeting, she wrote to her husband Harold Nicholson:

“I simply adore Virginia Woolf, and so would you … Mrs Woolf is so simple…At first you think she is plain, then a sort of spiritual beauty imposes itself on you, and you find a fascination in watching her…I’ve rarely taken such a fancy to anyone”.

In true Vita style - slightly arrogant, slightly pushy, but with a charm and vitality that few could resist - she persuaded Virginia into several dinners.

What is society’s thought about women and identity? Do you agree with them? If Yes then why? If no then why?

In society's thought about women and identity, I agree. Orlando becomes a woman, she understands that society expects her to “be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely appareled.” The only problem, Orlando maintains, is that women are none of those things naturally, and Woolf uses Orlando’s transition to show how these expectations are artificial and socially constructed. Hairdressing alone takes up an hour of Orlando’s mornings as a woman, then “there’s looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there’s changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; and there’s being chaste year in year out.” The expectations and restrictions placed on women are ridiculous, Woolf implies, and are entirely manmade. “A pox on them!” Orlando says in response to society’s expectations of her as a woman, suddenly “realising for the first time, what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.” To Orlando-and, by extension, Woolf-“the sacred responsibilities of womanhood” amount to a nuisance, “a pox,” or, more precisely, a disease, which only serves to hinder women and hold them to impossible standards. In Orlando’s experience, being a woman “meant conventionality, meant slavery, meant deceit, meant denying her love, fettering her limbs, pursing her lips, and restraining her tongue”-all things she is not expected to do as a man. Orlando’s profound change places her, and Woolf, in a unique position to critique the existence of men and women respectively in English society, and her conclusion is that women are, in many ways, objectified and marginalised on account of their gender.

  What are your views on Gender Identity? Will you like to give any message to society?

Our society has a set of ideas about how we expect men and women to dress, behave, and present themselves.

Gender roles in society means how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex. For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold.

Every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, but they can be very different from group to group. They can also change in the same society over time.

Write a note on the direction of the movie. Which symbols and space caught your attention while watching the movie?

“Vita & Virginia” wastes the talents of four people-its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too. It is a bit of a chamber piece, a bit of a romance, a bit of a commentary on creativity, a bit of social commentary, even a bit of magical realism. At a certain point, I started to wonder if the disjointed nature of “Vita & Virginia” was designed purposefully to replicate the structure and themes of Woolf’s Orlando, but decided I was giving a messy movie too much credit. Sometimes a mess is just a mess.

The Woolf captured here is just starting to become the one we know today. She’s dealing with mental illness and anxiety over the publication of Mrs. Dalloway when she becomes infatuated with Vita, the yin to her yang. The idea that Vita should be a more vibrant, outgoing personality to counter Virginia’s reticent, wallflower personality is fine on a creative level, but it leads to a film with two performances at its centre that feel like they’re from different movies. Arterton goes broad in line reading and facial expressions, but Debicki goes too far in the other direction. If Arterton is playing in the back row of the theatre, Debicki is playing to the people who could afford the front. They’re both very good taken on their own, but it creates a lack of chemistry in the centre in which it doesn’t just feel like the two women have different personalities but like they’re in different movies. Arterton and Debicki are excellent actresses, but it was Button’s responsibility to pull them together as a director, and that just never happens.

Part of the problem is that the script never allows for depth of character, making the exaggerated over- and under-acting more apparent. This is a film filled with people who say what they want, feel, and need all the time. A character literally says, “You must remember that Virginia is vulnerable under all her brilliance.” Oh, really? Thanks. The film constantly telegraphs the intended depths of its storytelling without ever actually doing the digging. The result is an experience that’s oddly flat when it’s not spiralling off into flights of fancy, usually through a bouncy but slightly incongruous score or a bit of magical realism with Virginia, who has visions like birds attacking her or vines growing in her house.

Vita and Virginia" had to be made into Bollywood Adaptation, who do you think would be fit for the role of Vita and Virginia?

 If Vita and Virginia would be a Bollywood adaptation I would select Katrina Kaif in the role of Virginia Woolf and Anushka Sharma in the role of Vita Sackville.

Thank you

(Words :-1353)