“Hope for the unknown is good. It is better than hatred of the familiar.” Ona (Rooney Mara)
Women in an isolated religious community, think Mennonite, argue about the benefits and dangers of leaving the community because of their abuse by men. Hope is the operative emotion.
Women Talking is a minimalist film, stagey and talky (It won the Critics Choice Award for best adapted screenplay), told as if the Amish and the Mormons mixed their motifs to feature their ascetic and paternalistic burdens only to find after all the years of their imprisonment pervasive repression by the ruling men. Female empowerment goes nose to nose with Christian beliefs.
Because the setting is spare (mostly inside a barn with light seeping through the imprisoning slats), writer/director Sarah Polley and co-writer Miriam Toews, from her book, are able to focus on the arguments that center on whether to do nothing, fight, or flee, the third term arguable for its pejorative, cowardly connotation. The strength of the script is the power of their arguments, to stay or leave, unadorned with excessive emotion or specious argument. One could argue illiterate women could never speak this well, but that suspicion misses authors’ artistic license and the audience’s need to suspend disbelief.
Add touches of humor for a full cinematic experience. Existential it is for anyone thinking of combating the patriarchy, but pleasant it is to hear arguments without rancor and with sympathy for opposing points of view.
Among the women is the only man to appear, August (Ben Whishaw), a university graduate supportive of the potential revolution. Another man, Klaus, is like Godot, anticipated but not yet appearing. Klaus continues to rape; he hovers over the dialogue as a manifestation of the oppression the women are combating.
Women Talking is a strong evocation of the current feminist arguments about lack of equality, religious freedom, and the challenges of asserting themselves in the face of men’s owning the franchise. The spare setting, with its bar-like slats and 19th-century surroundings, universalizes the women’s subjugation into any time or place, but mostly the antiquated milieu women have suffered for millennia. The picture window in the barn looks like a movie screen evoking the elusive outside world on the horizon. Their talking has a tinge of hope that they may change their lives for the better.
The arguments acknowledge the possibility of violence. Such is the possibility for any insurrection, noble or ignoble. For pacifists, as the religious community can be characterized in Women Talking, the acknowledgement of its possibility stops the revolutionary spirit at least to consider carefully violence as a necessary condition of freedom
Women Talking does not sugarcoat the conditions of emancipation. Like the film itself, the audience will leave considering the conditions of freedom and the multiple ironies of revolution:
“Why does love - the absence of love, the end of love, the need for love - result in so much violence?” Ona
Women Talking
Director: Sarah Polley (Away from Her)
Screenplay: Polley, from Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain
Cast: Rooney Mara (Carol), Judith Ivey (Flags of Our Fathers)
Run Time: 1h 44m
Rating: PG-13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
