The Righteous Rage of Women Talking: A Film Review
Before tackling Women Talking as a film, it’s important to put precautions first. This article talks about sensitive matters like sexual assault and abuse that may trigger some readers. This also contains spoilers about the film. Read with your mental state at mind.
Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is a horrifying, thrilling, enraging, and inspiring tale, all at once. Based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, it tells the story of women in an isolated town, united to make a critical decision. The film received a lot of acclaim from variety of critics and establishments through out the year. As a matter of fact, it recently earned two nods from this year’s Oscars: Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Believe as poised to win the latter, critics unanimously applaud the guts of the film.
The story of Women Talking is very simple and straight-forward, yet so critical and delicate in themes. For a long time, the women of an isolated religious community have been drugged with cow tranquilizer and assaulted on a regular basis during the night. The women had been told they were being violated by ghosts and demons. They believed this lie until two young girls saw one of the assaulters one night. In result, some men of the town were arrested and brought to the city. All the remaining men followed to arrange for bail. With the women of the town left unsupervised for a short period of time, they all weigh in what step they would do: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave.
The film may somehow forsake entertaining drama in favor of simply getting its points across, but its message is valuable— and effectively delivered. Women Talking is not just a simple film on a post-#MeToo era, it’s an amalgamation of all the voices and lives of most, if not all, women. It’s a film that not just poke the topic for the sake of it, it dives deep and strikes hearts. It stands up bravely with its different firm aspects.
Striking Screenplay
Sarah Polley adapts Miriam Toews’s novel into a timely political parable. It lays down the sensible choices of the women and sharpen them with striking lines that evoke the criticality. Much like the book, she defines these women not just a collective but also individuals at the same time. She allows each female character to tell their own experiences and define them respectively, but it also points out their collective struggle. These women tell different stories but they all have the same pleas.
Although a huge fraction of the film is just a conversation between these women, it doesn’t feel so dragging. Polley has successfully created several emotional peaks to depict the intensity of the situation. One of the strongest elements of the film is the debate itself, much of which lifted directly from the book. It’s like seeing how democracy works. These women are in an important meeting that would ultimately change their lives. But they don’t just talk, they also cry, argue, reminisce and laugh. Polley allows vignettes and flashbacks to make this work.
The film adaptation removes a couple of layers from the original: August (Ben Whishaw) is present, scribbling away on the periphery, but he is not the narrator. As the only male left in the town after the incident, the women trusted him to write the minutes of the meeting, as he is the teacher of the boys in the town. This, of course, pays off as a move, in order to put the spotlight and in the women. August can’t get into their interior lives, what it’s like inside their hearts, so he just writes what they say and what they do, trying not to editorialize. He is more so just a bystander in the conversation of these women.
The righteous rage
Women Talking never shows the men. Rather than being a revenge tale in which the women inflict violent retribution on their attackers and abusers, the film never even regards the men as subjects—rightly so. There is an air of righteous rage in this notion of women disregarding the state or existence of these men. Rather than being vessels of vengeance and violence, the story follows the women as they figure out what’s best for them. There is also a concept of morality implied in the film: repaying violence with another violence is just perpetration.
Despite that, it doesn’t underestimate the emotions of the women. They are in rage, beyond one could know. They show this in telling their experiences, crying and cursing around. The righteous rage here is not righteous because they did not resort to violence; it is righteous because they have every reason to be so. And they explore all these reasons so smoothly and with justice. They realize that they have been abused, deprived of rights and education, and manipulated.
“We didn’t talk about our bodies. So when something like this happened there was no language for it. And without language for it, there was a gaping silence. And in that gaping silence was the real horror.”
In one part, the women realize that they were not given enough authority to talk about their bodies and what’s happening over them. This resulted to silence, and silence resulted to complacency, resulting to the horrors. It depicts the importance of speaking up. In another scene, pastors commanded them to forgive the abusers, or they shall burn in hell. This leads them to ponder if forgiveness that is forced upon is true forgiveness. They are also weary that forgiveness can be mistake for permission, which would cause another tragedy over them. All these scenes elevate the meaning and importance of standing up and knowing when enough is enough.
Facing forward without fear
In exploring the three options of the women, it becomes clearer and clearer what the decision will be. A few might expect resignation to oppression or a revolutionary carnage, but the film draws realism as it picks to choose the most sensible one. They will leave. The lack of suspense in the decision is insignificant because the discussions that lead to the decision are utterly dramatic, intellectually absorbing and emotionally gripping.
“Freedom is good… it is better than slavery. And forgiveness is good, better than revenge. And hope for the unknown is good, better than hatred of the familiar.”
These discussions involve the morality of violence, the nature of true forgiveness, the question of male nature, and the responsibility borne even by men of the colony who weren’t among the attackers. They highlight that they are not going to resort to violence because they are afraid. Instead, it’s because they know better that fighting violence with another violence would result to nothing. They impose that they are leaving not because they forgive the men. Instead, it’s because they know better to build a world of their own that suits them better.
In the end, Sarah Polley’s Women Talking stands firm as a testament to the power and sensibilities of women. It is a solid case study of universal empathy, righteous rage, fractured language and apologies that never come. With a powerful ensemble of actors, it pairs the bravura of talent with a striking and ever-timely message. Women are capable of talking, and if only we often listen, we would know the power in their minds. It’s time to change.
Women Talking is more than a film, it’s a feminist stand against the abuse of the world to the women. It’s a statement, a demand for change. We should listen and learn from it.
