Miller sees through 'Angela'

Published: Thursday, February 1, 1996

Award-winning feature film debut focuses on child's imagination, spirituality

By Dina Gachman

Daily Bruin Contributor

Rebecca Miller sought more than just talented actors when casting her new film "Angela." She needed imagination and spirituality - unusual requirements coming from a director. While auditioning for the film, Miller realized that few children today possess the qualities she desired.

"They're thinking about what sneakers they want, or the video games they want to play," she says. "But I was looking for the kind of kid that has a natural affinity for spiritual matters."

Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller) and producer Ron Kastner auditioned over 1,200 little girls for "Angela," a film about two sisters whose quest to help their manic-depressive mother leads them into the visionary, and dangerous, world of the imagination. Seven-year-old Charlotte Blyth was cast as the younger sister Ellie, and 11-year-old Miranda Stuart Rhyne landed the title role.

"Angela," which opens on Feb. 2 and was awarded the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, is Miller's first feature. In 1990, she made a narrative short entitled "Florence," the story of a woman who catches her neighbor's amnesia and loses her identity.

Dream imagery and poetic visions appear in both of Miller's films. She attributes these qualities to her years as a painter and sculptor - mediums in which visual aesthetics such as color and shape define the art. Conveying these images on film was a difficult task for Miller.

"I was trying to put my finger on something that's quite ineffable, which is the spiritual life of a person - the part that isn't visible, that comes in flickering images and feelings and moods," explains the director.

Equally hard for Miller was portraying the images in "Angela" through the eyes of a child, rather than an adult.

"I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me," she says. "That was hard - to make sure that the visions were the visions of the children."

Miller, whose soft voice and eager blue eyes ironically give the impression of a wise little girl, loved directing Charlotte and Miranda. She says that working with children gave the set the same imaginative and spiritual freedom she wanted to portray in the film.

"It gave the shoot a quality that you're just not gonna get with adults," says Miller. "We were living in a magical world."

Miller's experience as an actor (in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" and "Regarding Henry") aided her in helping her cast portray this fantasy world.

"I think it helped me because you understand how vulnerable an actor is," she says. "I think a lot of directors are afraid of actors, secretly. They don't really like having to deal with them."

Miller's ability to relate to her cast intensified her relationships with them, both on and off-camera. John Ventimiglia (who plays the girls' father Andrew) and Anna Thomson (their ethereal, troubled mother Mae) agree that Miller's acting experience made her what some term, an actor's director. She rarely demanded specific performances, and instead allowed the actors to interpret situations and emotions for themselves.

This freedom and support also helped Charlotte and Miranda (both first-time actors) feel comfortable on the set, and understand the spiritual, sometimes frightening world they were portraying.

"They really trusted me like they would have trusted another child," says Miller. "They knew that I understood them and accepted them."

The events in the film are seen from a child's perspective, but Miller believes that adults can also relate to the visionary, imaginative world portrayed in "Angela."

"One of the problems with the way children are represented on film is that it's through the filter of an adult," she says. "What's interesting to me is when people, especially women, see the film, they recognize their childhood. They remember, so it's still in them."

FILM: "Angela" opens on Feb. 2 in limited release.

John Ventimiglia, Miranda Stuart Rhyne and Anna Thomson in Rebecca Miller's "Angela."

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