‘Miss Sloane’ director John Madden on filming U.S. gun control drama in Canada

By Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – In making a thriller with the issue of U.S. gun control at its core, British director John Madden says he felt at home filming “Miss Sloane” in Canada.

In theatres Friday, the film stars Jessica Chastain as a powerful and cutthroat lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who fights for the passing of a bill that would impose new regulations on the sale of firearms. Her efforts are stalled, however, when the Senate starts probing her personal and professional secrets.

“I felt at home here, obviously, on this issue, at home in Canada, because I suppose we’re of like mind, really, and it is such a confounding issue when you stand away from it,” the Oscar-nominated English director behind “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” said during a recent stop in Toronto, where he filmed “Miss Sloane.”

“You just don’t really understand how it’s possible, one catastrophe after another. I found actually watching (U.S. President) Obama’s response to I don’t know how many major atrocities happened in his eight-year term, far too many, obviously — he became increasingly speechless, a man who is supposed to make speeches after those kind of events.

“The failure of any legislative response that had any meaning … it’s quite amazing; the stranglehold over that policy that one part of the argument has, one vested interest has.”

First-time scriptwriter Jonathan Perera penned the plot-twist-filled story, which co-stars Toronto native Alison Pill, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, John Lithgow, Sam Waterston and Mark Strong, among others.

Chastain’s character is a flawed heroine who seems to have lost touch with her humanity. In the office, she manipulates members of her team to achieve a certain outcome. Outside the office, she has no intimate relationships and has to pay for sex and also grapples with chronic insomnia.

“That strand of the story is a strange inversion,” Madden said, “because women are so often defined in movies by their sexuality or their sexual presence. They’re usually not in control of those scenes. In this case, this person is.”

Madden said the film is not a polemic on the issue of gun control, noting it’s balanced and more about the protagonist’s journey and the political process itself.

But it’s become a lightning rod for online debates over the issue, he concedes.

“Clearly we know this is a topic that provokes passionate arguments on both sides, but of course that’s become greatly intensified — because I’m sure we’ve been demonized as bleeding-heart, liberal, Hollywood kind of taking on an issue we should just shut up about,” he said.

“But it’s about other things, besides which have also become very hot topics — the role of women, for example, the role of empowered women in any kind of political discussion is shot right to the forefront of the agenda in what we might call presidential discourse.

“That’s probably crediting it with too much dignity, but it’s important that that is out there as some kind of antidote to the world we seem to be sliding towards now.”

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