‘Persuasion’ Director Carrie Cracknell on Breaking the Fourth Wall and Finding the Anne-Wentworth Chemistry Through Zoom
thewrap.com“Persuasion,” from first-time feature film director Carrie Cracknell.Starring Dakota Johnson as Austen heroine Anne Elliott and Cosmo Jarvis as the love of her youth, Frederick Wentworth, the movie stays fairly true to the basic plot of Austen’s beloved final novel, but updates it by having protagonist Anne speak directly to camera.
As Anne learns the man whose heart she broke is returning, now a much more socially suitable war-celebrated ship captain, the audience becomes who she turns to as she expresses her internal monologue of feelings, or even for sassy observations about her overly-dramatic younger sister.“I think the use of the breaking of the fourth wall was something that we tried to be very kind of thoughtful and considered about,” Cracknell, a multi-award-nominated theater director, told TheWrap. “We experimented a lot on set with it.
Dakota would test out different ways of looking to camera, different kinds of connections with the camera.“For me, it felt [like] casting the audience in a way as her confidante and kind of drawing them into her story,” Cracknell continued. “It really gave her a lot of opportunity to kind of express her inner landscape and find more humor as well.
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