Women Talking (2022)
Review of Women Talking, directed by Sarah Polley
I do not know what drew me into Women Talking to begin with, but, during my winter break from graduate school, I ended up booking a ticket to see the movie.
I had never seen the trailer and only knew that it was one of the movies selected to be considered for Best Picture, but the distribution schedule and the lack of press wasn’t going to be good for its run.
I also found out later it is the last movie to be released by UAR (rest in peace), as the organization was folded immediately after its release.
But man, was I glad I saw Women Talking. I think it is a movie you simply have to get, and as someone who studies women and gender specifically, I ended up crying during that last scene of the movie. It definitely deserved that Oscar for Best Picture—I thought that iwas well done with that script, passing whatever parameters it needed to prove its worth with writing.
Onwards with the review!
The women of a Mennonite colony discover a horrible secret, forcing them to make a big decision.
Women Talking, which is based on a novel that, in turn, is based off of a real event that happened in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia, is set presumably somewhere in the United States. One of the movie’s turns is that when a census taker comes in, the only evidence of an outside world during the movie, is that the year is 2010.
You wouldn’t think this from the way the women dress—the closest equivalent are the Amish to what is happening here. The farm work and home life is dictated from a rather traditional way of doing things, so everything seems backwards to the modern viewer familiar with the United States.
The women of the colony, though, have discovered a terrible secret that they’ve been gaslit about throughout the experience living here. The men of the colony, ranging from young boys and teenagers to full-grown adults, have been using cow tranquilizer to knock them out and rape them in their sleep.
The victims range in ages—one of the mothers, Salome, is justifiably angry throughout the movie because her three-year-old daughter was attacked by the men. They were then lied about because the men would not admit what they have done. They were caught by two of the younger girls, leading to the breadcrumbs that became the horrific explanation as to why so many women were pregnant.
So the women have gathered to discuss what to do. They have determined that their options are to stay and live life as they know it, fight the men and assert dominance, or leave everything behind. One character, portrayed by Frances McDormand, is adamant about staying with the men and forgiving them, then takes away her daughter and granddaughter from the scene.
The vote conducted by the women of the colony ends with a tie between fighting and leaving, so the representatives of families remain in the barn and begin an extensive debate about what to do. Their timekeeper is August (Ben Whishaw), a young man whose mother left the colony, and he returned in search of educating the young men to be better.
The gaslighting continues through their conversation as the argument is that if they leave, they will be denied the chance to go to heaven. For religious women whose entire lives have revolved around their faith, this could be absolutely devastating to confront.
But still the women decide that they need to consider the act of leaving for the sake of their safety, busting out allegories of what fear could look like on the road ahead, as well as how violence would be a direct violation of their faith if they decided to fight the men.
That’s what the good bulk of the movie consists of—intense, philosophical debates about what it means to stay or leave. There’s some absolutely gorgeous quotes and monologues done by these women, and some, justifiably, are angry with what happened to them and their daughters.
Women Talking is not everyone’s cup of two because of this, especially as it resembles a more serious version of 12 Angry Men. The women do come to a consensus, eventually, that the thing that most aligns with their faith and decision-making process was to leave.
And leave they do, with the final scene telling a child in a voiceover “your story will be different.” They leave behind August, who contemplates suicide with a gun because he’s madly in love with Ona, but then he decides to live on after a pep talk to keep living and teach the boys to become better than their fathers.
One of the biggest critiques of Women Talking I’ve seen online are that the women are too intelligent for people who are not allowed to learn how to read, or be in a school classroom.
Only the men of the colony are allowed to be educated. I would say this argument could be rooted in sexism itself, as these women are capable of being intelligent. They might not be able to read, but they’re familiar with oral histories and how to articulate one’s self from a religious angle.
One can be become very well articulate if they spend a lot of time having these conversations, which they might be. There’s a thoughtful nature to their conversation, one that is worth examining deeper.
Overall Thoughts
Like I said, I ended up crying while watching Women Talking. I thought it was a gorgeous movie, although the cinematography is pretty drab throughout.
It’s a dark movie in the sense of its coloring, but when the women are finally coming to a conclusion, with the pressure of the men arriving back home looming over them, the world begins to brighten. It’s a movie about women and the quiet strength they don’t know they have, even if it means leaving everything they once knew behind.
Absolutely stunning. There’s a lot of discussion one could make about gender throughout this one, especially as one of the characters, the mute one, is technically trans. The acting, too, is absolutely incredible.
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