TORONTO -- After exploring the worlds of Freeganism, anarchism and corporate greed with the new spy thriller "The East," stars Brit Marling and Ellen Page found themselves wrestling with living and working in the glam of Hollywood.
Opening Friday in Toronto, the drama stars Marling as Sarah, a former FBI agent at an elite private Washington intelligence firm that protects the interests of major corporations. When the firm head (Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson) gets Sarah to infiltrate the anarchist eco-terrorism cell The East in their forest dwelling, the agent becomes attached to the mesmerizing leader (Alexander Skarsgard) and the group members (including Page and Toby Kebbell). Julia Ormond plays one of The East's corporate victims.
Marling also co-produced and co-wrote the film. Zal Batmanglij, with whom Marling attended Georgetown University and created the 2011 cult thriller "Sound of My Voice," co-wrote and directed.
The two embarked on the project after the participation in Buy Nothing Day led them to a summer living out of backpacks and hopping trains with those following a Freegan lifestyle, which included a "radical autonomy from the system," eating food scraps from trash bins and sleeping in large groups in one room.
Page hasn't lived the Freegan life but she has been around many likeminded groups, having lived on an eco-village while studying permaculture for about a month at the Lost Valley education and event centre in Oregon.
"After making this film or the experience being at Lost Valley in Oregon, it's hard coming back to society because you just see everything completely differently," Page said in a recent interview. "Like, no exaggeration -- you see a toilet differently, a lawn differently, food differently. Everything you see differently and I think what this movie explores -- which I enjoyed so much, and I connected to the story of Brit's character, Sarah -- is: do we run away to the woods and become Freegans, and is that the best choice to make, or do you stay in the infrastructure that we've inherited and do what we can within that to create positive change?
"Now, I don't know the answer to that. Like, maybe I'm just being a selfish jerk, I don't know. But that idea I think is something so many people are wrestling with, because a lot of people see the injustice going on, corporate greed and what we're doing to the environment," continued the Halifax-born Oscar nominee for "Juno," whose other credits include "Inception," "Smart People" and the "X-Men" franchise.
"And it's hard to know what to do when the system really just beats you down with the ideas and the infrastructure that's kind of put in place."
"Even on a press tour like this, how do you behave responsibly?" said Marling, who recently starred in Robert Redford's "The Company You Keep." "Like, there's so much excess, there are so many things that just get arranged in a certain way, where SUVs are ferrying things here and there.
"How do you suddenly wake up to all of that and try to have it all be more responsible? It's complicated."
Marling was once even part of the corporate world The East is against, having studied economics at Georgetown University and worked as investment-banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.
But after following the Freegan movement with Batmanglij, she had a hard time leaving it.
"It's an intense way to live and an inspiring way to live because you become so connected to people, and then when you come back into the world as we know it, it feels lonely and alienating by comparison, and hard," said the Chicago native.
"It was hard at that time to even go see a movie in the theatre, because it felt like you were sort of surrendering to someone else's experience other than your own. Of course, within a few weeks I was back to seeing movies all the time, because I love them, but it was a difficult adjustment because it was an incredible experience."
Like "The East" members, the Freegans Marling and Batmanglij met were self-sufficient, doing everything from fixing their cars to growing their own food and even administering their own medical treatment.
Marling said they're still "really close" with some of those Freegans, who had input into the script and visited the set. The filmmakers were also "very conscious" of trying to eliminate waste onset and making the project "responsibly" and for as little as possible -- all while delivering "something that is widely entertaining and appealing."
Page was struck by the sense of community the Freegans brought to the six-week shoot in Shreveport, La.
"I think the loneliness and isolation of modern culture is one of the most unspoken, awful things that we all experience but weirdly aren't talking about," she said. "And I remember they arrived and they were sort of blown away that a house had been rented for them, and they all slept in the same room because sleeping in separate rooms from each other was not just unusual but uncomfortable.
"It seems crazy and then you're like alone in your hotel room and you're like, 'Yeah!"'
"'Why am I alone in my hotel room? This makes no sense. It would be much better,"' interjected Marling with a laugh. "And we all started basically hanging out at one house and we got rid of the other stuff and it was like, Alex Skarsgard turns out to be an amazing cook and Zal, the two of them made all the meals.
"Like, our whole band of outsiders would just eat together, hang out together."
