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Strong Words: Film Review of Women Talking
By Geoff Carter
Language not only defines reality; it constructs reality, forming the narratives that are the lanes through which we navigate our world. Finding names for subtleties of emotions, relationships, and belief helps in the understanding of the concepts underlying the words. Language also helps draw the boundaries of common shared realities. Defining what something is not defines what it might be.
Linguist Noam Chomsky once said, “The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself” and “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” (Quote Fancy)
Women Talking is not only a film about identity, power, and voice, it is also a film about the power of words and the awakening of new sensibilities and empowerments through language. After the perpetrators of a series of horrific rapes in a secluded religious community are caught and taken to the authorities by the village elders, the women are left by the community to decide what to do for themselves while the men raise bail for the prisoners. Having never been taught how to read or write, the women vote on three choices drawn on a large sheet of paper: Leave things alone, Stay and Fight, or Leave. When the results are tallied, there is a tie between staying and fighting or leaving.
The novel Woman Talking by Miriam Toews was based on an actual incident that occurred in a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia. The victims there were knocked out with a cattle tranquilizer and raped in their beds and woke with no recollection of what had happened to them.
In the film, representatives from four families are selected to decide whether to stay and fight or to leave. The delegation consists of two older women Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy), three younger women, Ona (Rooney Mara)—who is pregnant after she was raped, Salome (Claire Foy), and Mariche (Jessie Buckley). Three younger girls, played by Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, and Liv McNeil are also in attendance, the two younger ones playing in the barn, braiding each other’s hair, and drawing. As a backdrop to the seriousness of the situation, their playful innocence is a welcome relief.
At one time or another, all the women have been assaulted. Salome and Mariche, both mothers of young children, (one of whom has likely been assaulted—although that fact is never explicitly stated in the film), communicate various degrees of rage and helplessness. Salome even attacks one of the confined perpetrators with a scythe while Mariche lashes out at everyone, including the other women, in her anger. Ona is a forgiving and deeply spiritual—markedly so even in this religious community—woman who, even though she can neither read nor write, displays a persistent curiosity about the world which is satisfied by the mild-mannered schoolmaster August (Ben Winshaw), the one man in the ban who has been recruited by the women to keep minutes of the meeting—since none of them can read or write.
The two elders Agata and Greta offer their wisdom and experience to the meeting, but as parents and grandparents who lived with these atrocities for years, watching their own daughters fall victims to rape, are ultimately ashamed of their inaction. Particularly enlightening—and entertaining—are Greta’s anecdotal kernels of agrarian wisdom about her horses Sharon and Ruth, whose actions sometimes analogous to the choices the women must soon make.
Films comprised of mostly discussions, in and of themselves not terribly cinematic, can make for compelling viewing, even though they are often criticized for being too theater-like. Twelve Angry Men is a fascinating character study of a jury’s deliberations in a murder case. As in Women Talking, dialogue is the engine which drives the narrative and creates audience empathy with the twelve jurors who are deciding on the fate of a young defendant.
The women’s discussion spans the gamut from spiritual concerns: Will we go to heaven if we leave? Will God still love us? to the practical: Where will we go? Since none of the women are educated and don’t know how to read a map, let alone geography, leaving is not only frightening, but harrowing. Then there is the question of forgiveness. Should the victims forgive their attackers, in some cases members of their own families? How can they do so? Salome already tried to kill some of them. And then there is the issue of plain survival. Mariche and Salome insist that their children must be protected, even if they must kill the men to do so. August, so traumatized by being raped by her own brother that she refuses to speak, has taken on the identity of a man. Another woman recently committed suicide after her attack. Ona, who is carrying the child of her rapist, when asked if she resents the child, says that she already loves it more than anything.
As these diverse and sometimes polar opposite threads weave through the warp and woof of their dilemma, the women slowly build not only a consensus for action, but the beginnings of political consciousness—and an embryonic sense of freedom. The journey into their psyches, aspirations, and fears, tempered by their deep faith, intuition, and experience is a joy to witness. Director Sarah Polley’s screenplay is taut, gripping, and revelatory. Her inclusion of the young girls, the ‘tweens, is a masterstroke; the girls’ energy and playfulness, along with Ona’s grace, hints at what a society established by these might be.
Polley has drawn strikingly visceral yet relatable performances from her ensemble. Foy’s Salome’s rage constantly simmers just under the surface—more than occasionally boiling over, yet she cannot conceal the fear and anguish—and betrayal, that fuels it. Rooney Mara’s Ona is warm, forgiving, and calm. In the hands of another actress, this character might have become a caricature of a timid and weak female. Instead, Rooney injects Ona with a level of joy and curiosity that is simultaneously childlike and ethereal. But she is no neophyte blindly quoting scripture. She is an intelligent and insightful woman. It is no wonder that August is in love with her. The rest of the ensemble is magnificent. As the two elders, McCarthy and Ivey shine. Their benevolence and sharp wisdom sometimes belie their constancy.
Besides drawing outstanding performances from her cast, Polley has created a world of subdued tone and color. The women’s dresses are dark and drab affairs and even the fields seem washed out, a reflection of the bleak world in which these women are forced to exist.
Women Speaking is not only a brilliantly acted and tautly directed film, but also an allegory for women’s struggles for equality and empowerment everywhere. Women caught in a repressive theocracy is uncomfortably close to fictional works like The Handmaid’s Tale and real-life occurrences like the Dobbs decision or the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran. The film is not only a cautionary tale, but a story of independence, rebirth, vision, and hope.