THE CHATTER
The filmmakers behind the new Margaret Atwood documentary find the writer just as intelligent and engaged and combative and funny today as she has ever been Chris Knight
A new Margaret Atwood doc reveals the author to be as hilarious as she is intelligent
Like many, they had admired her from afar for years. Then they were invited to shadow her for 12 months, following and filming and ultimately interviewing one of the giants of Canadian literature. But they never dared call her Peggy.
“No, that’s by invitation only,” says one. “I wouldn’t presume,” notes the other.
They are co- directors Nancy Lang and Peter Raymont, whose new film is called Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power. Raymont is president of White Pine Pictures, whose patriotic docs include Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould; Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire; and the recent Toronto festival opening-night film Once Were Brothers; Robbie Robertson and The Band.
He notes that Atwood has appeared in many films, and been the central subject of several, including Michael Rubbo’s 1985 short Once in August; Ron Mann’s 2010 film In the Wake of the Flood; and Jennifer Baichwal’s Payback from 2012.
“But none of them were Margaret Atwood’s biography,” he notes. “They were bits and pieces of her through her life.” A Word after a Word after a Word is Power, which takes its title from Atwood’s poem Spelling, chronicles the writer’s life from her 1939 birth in Ottawa through her work on The Testaments, her latest novel and the sequel to 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Two notable postscripts to the film: the death of her longtime spouse and fellow writer, Graeme Gibson, in September; and her Booker Prize win for The Testaments in October. “We’ve been documenting the last year of his life,” says Lang sadly of Gibson’s passing.
The documentary features a few famous faces – Sarah Polley and Adrienne Clarkson, for instance – but that wasn’t the main focus for the filmmakers. “We could have gone for the literary greats,” says Raymont. “The people we chose to include are the people who know her best on a personal level.” That includes family and such friends as Susan Milmoe, her old roommate at Radcliffe College.
Raymont’s fear that a lack of “names” might hurt the film’s prospects turned out to be unfounded. In addition to a cross- Canada theatrical run and a CBC airing, A Word after a Word after a Word is Power has been picked up for theatrical or television release by every country in Europe, by Australia and by Hulu in America. The world premiere at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto on Thursday will be followed by its European debut at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam on Nov. 23.
“Yesterday we got an email from our distributor that we sold it to
Iran,” says Raymont. “The writer of The Handmaid’s Tale is going to be on TV in Iran!”
Despite not being invited to call her Peggy, the filmmakers say Atwood is remarkably down-to-earth. “Day-to-day she lives a simple life,” says Lang. “It’s not full of fancy things. It’s comfortable and worn.”
This in spite of a hectic itinerary. “Her schedule is like the Prime Minister’s,” says Raymont. “Jetting back and forth across the Atlantic, off to Australia, off to Iceland.” Though she also finds time to visit Pelee Island in southern Ontario, where the filmmakers find her weeding the forest and fretting about invasive species.
Lang refers to her as a philosopher queen, “sorting out our moral life and how you find a higher purpose, and exploring all aspects of our humanity, social structure and personal relationships. She considers so many aspects of life, and she’s very interested in human nature.”
But she’s anything but sombre. “She could do stand-up comedy!”
The film includes a brief clip of Atwood during a CBC interview from 1977, which gets off to a rocky start when interviewer Hana Gartner tells her: “Your stories make me very sad ... The relationships between man and women are dismal.”
“Can I say something very rude?” Atwood asks, before suggesting that what Gartner wants can be found in Harlequin Romance novels. “They don’t cost very much and you can get them in every drugstore.”
The full interview in all its awkwardness can be viewed on the CBC’S online archives under the title “Margaret Atwood brandishes her caustic tongue.” Later in the exchange, Gartner tries to get the author to talk about herself. Atwood demurs: “There is no hard and determined central personality, just as you’re going to be a different person when you’re 80 than you are now.”
She turns 80 on Nov. 18. Lang and Raymont can attest that she’s just as intelligent and engaged and combative and funny today as she ever was. “She’s not going to disappear too soon,” says Lang.
Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power screened at the Lightbox in Toronto on Nov. 7. It opens Nov. 8 in Hamilton and Waterloo; Nov. 11 in Edmonton; Nov. 13 in Ottawa; and Nov. 14 in Toronto.