VIFF: A Sense of Wonder Director Christopher Monger On the Legendary Spirit of Rachel Carson

A Sense of Wonder is part of the Vancouver Film Festival section The Ark, showcases environmental and nature-themed films. The film details the last year of marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson's life before she died of breast cancer. Considered a pioneer of the environmental movement, Carson was an often reluctant social critic, scientist, and lover of nature, stirred by the simple beauty around her. Through her writing, she was an advocate of stricter environmental regulations and corporate and government accountability.

Carson's book The Sea Around Us was a bestseller in 1951, followed by The Edge of the Sea, Under the Sea-Wind, and her most popular, Silent Spring in 1962, which focused on the dangers of synthetic pesticides. Although she was called an alarmist by government and big business, the book received widespread attention from the American public and facilitated the reversal in national pesticide policy that led to a ban on DDT and other chemicals.

A Sense of Wonder is based on the one-woman play of the same name starring, who has performed it for the past 10 years across America. Lee also plays Carson in the film version, which is shot in documentary style and told solely from Carson's point of view. It chronicles Carson's environmental legacy and illustrates her reverence of nature and kind, gentle spirit.

The film was directed by Christopher Monger, an award-winning director, screenwriter and editor from Wales. Monger is probably best known for directing The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain (1995). He has directed eight other feature films and written numerous screenplays, and was in Vancouver for the VIFF screening of A Sense of Wonder.

Vancouver.com: What was the response to the VIFF screening of your film?

Christopher Monger: It was great. It [A Sense of Wonder] seems so relevant - people are captivated, and angry, and want to do something.

V: I was surprised how poignant it was – I guess I was expecting the film to be more about her environmental actions, not so focused on her spirit. It was really beautiful.

CM: Thank you. The last 10 minutes still catches me, when she is facing her mortality. I always find it moving.

V: How did you become involved with the film?

CM: My wife sent me to the play. I was on my way to Britain, and she had met Kaiulani's husband. She said 'You have to see this play,' and it was amazing. When Kaiulani said 'I'd like to turn it into a film' I didn't think she'd actually do it, but she found the money. (laughs) I thought I don't want to film a play, but once we cracked the idea of making it a documentary format, it became very interesting.

V: What message would you like people who watch the film to come away with?

CM: That one person can make a difference. This is a woman who was a trained scientist but not an activist, who had a 9-5 job and looked after all these people, and nevertheless wrote one of the most significant books of our time. It's a call to action - people gasp when the stats come up at the end, and you get this feeling that it's not done.

V: Because the film was a play for so long, and Kaiulani knew Rachel Carson's character, did you find it was easier to direct, or more difficult?

CM: It was both – easy because the character was completely set: she found the character years ago, knew an hour's worth of dialogue. The harder thing, first of all, was bringing the voice to a more intimate place. She had built rhythms and intonations, and I wanted it faster, so it took awhile to get the pace. She also had certain actions, almost like she was hardwired to make movements at certain times, because she had done it onstage so long. The problem was getting her to change from stage performance style to making it very intimate. I was also very nervous about the second half, because it's in one room.

V: How long did the film take to shoot?

CM: It took five days – three days at Carson's cabin, two days at a house. The cabin is full of Carson's things, because her son Roger lives there - it's his summer home - so we didn't need props. We couldn't get access to Carson's home in Silver Spring so the second room in the film was in an empty house in Maine. I worked on another documentary film that took two and a half years from start to finish. You can't usually do that - to shoot something in five days, and have it at a festival within a few months.

V: What are you working on next?

CM: I'm working on Monday, on a script I wrote that starts production in Austin, Texas, directed by Mick Jackson and starring Claire Danes. It's about Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who didn't speak until she was four. Now she's developed and built livestock facilities, like slaughterhouses, that embrace stress free containment of animals. I'm researching another script, Dangerous Doses, about the pharmaceutical drug industry and tampering. In the spring I'm directing Amateur Pornographer, a comedy, and a project called SOS Doctors, about the French SOS doctor system.

A Sense of Wonder enjoyed its world premiere Sept 30^th at VIFF. For more information on the film and its director, visit it asenseofwonderfilm.com.