women-talking-movie

Women Talking

The last time we had a new Sarah Polley was all the way back in 2013, when her documentary Stories We Tell laid bare the secrets that lie within her family. That film was tinged with a true crime suspense, but was ultimately the same mixture of intricacy and intimacy that came in her first two films, Away from Her and Take This Waltz. Altogether, the films formed an unofficial trilogy of empathy and serenity that surpassed most directors’ entire filmographies. Nine years passed before we got this year’s Women Talking (among other things, her return was delayed by a horrible concussion with symptoms that lasted over three years), one of the most anticipated films of the year. This is much different than anything she’s done before, the subject matter much darker, the tone more severe. Gone is the self-possessed calm of her previous work, replaced with a striking anger that reverberates through every scene.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, itself based on the true story of a Mennonite community in Bolivia. The novel’s intentional pacing builds slowly over the course of several sit down meetings between the women of the community. The men have been using cow anesthetic to incapacitate village women of all ages and violently rape them. A small, representative group of the women have come together to decide what they should do in response. Toews’ prose and dialogue is meant to be a translation of the Low German language, which is the only language the women know how to speak, and stipulations in the community require that the women are never taught to read or write. The subject matter of the novel is daunting enough, but adaptation here is particularly difficult in trying to reflect these women’s thoughts and objections in the more literal language of English.

So it’s good luck that the film got Sarah Polley, whose shown a specialty in crafting screenplays that pull off the impossible. Polley tinkers with a few things in Toews’ novel, but the basic conceit is still the same: most of the drama takes place in a hay loft, where the representatives talk out what they want to do in response to the men’s persistent violence. This is includes two elder women, Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy); Agata’s oldest daughters, Ona (Rooney Mara) and Salome (Claire Foy), and granddaughter Neitje (Liv McNeil); Greta’s oldest daughters Mariche (Jessie Buckley) and Mejal (Michelle McLeod), as well as Mariche’s daughter, Autje (Kate Hallett).  Unable to read and write, they willingly allow a single male into the room, a sensitive schoolteacher named August Epp (Ben Whishaw) to take the minutes of their meetings and help organize their thoughts and ultimate decision.

The meetings are only possible because the men are in town, attempting to post bail for one man who was caught trying to attack Autje, who saw the man’s face. The next day, Salome attacked the man with a scythe, and the police made an arrest to protect him from her. Given this rare opportunity, the women try to decide between three options: stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. The first option is quickly done away with, but there is grave debate about the last two. Some, like Salome, want to exact their revenge and fight their attackers, proving their ability to protect themselves and their daughters. Others, like Mariche, want to avoid violence at all costs, even if that includes staying within their abusive way of life. Tensions run high, Agata and Greta do their best to squelch violent outbursts among their daughters, while the youngest girls play in the background, blissfully suppressing the gravity of the situation.

All the women have their own individual tales – Mariche is married to her most vicious attacker, Ona is pregnant with her attacker’s baby, Greta wears dentures to replace the teeth her attacker knocked out – but they all share a collective experience, waking up in a daze to find bruises on their body and blood in their bed. The violation is made worse by what happens after: the men state vehemently that it is demons perpetrating the crimes, a consequence for the women’s sins. Unwilling to accept the responsibility of the horrors they unfurl, they pass it on to their victims and use the language of God to protect themselves. Indeed, it is the language of God that is the women’s greatest hurdle. The few women who wish to stay and do nothing (like Scarface Janz, a small but effective performance from Frances McDormand), do so because they truly believe retaliation in any form will cost them entry into the kingdom of Heaven.

Women Talking does not point its target at religion, and in fact one of the virtues of the book and the film is the nuance with which these forcefully uneducated women discuss the ethics and conflicts of interest that lie within their religious community. The level of servitude is so high that questioning men is in many ways like questioning God himself. It’s the frequency and barbarity of attacks that forces them to consider another possibility. This life cannot be what God imagined for his pupils, but if it is, then God cannot be as wise an entity as he is claimed to be. To an atheist like me, these conversations are all theoretical, but Polley expertly puts across just how actual these stakes are to them. Is it worth it to fight for dignity in this life if the price is your immortal soul? It’s incredibly moving to understand just how much these women believe they are risking, and its astonishing to see their bravery in the face of it.

There is a degree to which the film’s dialogue – which is direct and free of euphemism – works better in a book than a movie. The characters often speak the film’s themes in blunt ways, without considering the more subtle aspects of narrative script construction. Polley uses this to her advantage, though, further reinforcing the blooming of these women’s minds, speaking of concepts they are only now just realizing, eschewing sophistication for reality. As a director, Polley also contextualizes their experience precisely, working in beautifully small moments of wit and spirit, without ever shortchanging the bleak themes that encompass their story. Polley also takes narrator duties away from August, who is the sole point-of-view in the book, and places it within the women in a way I won’t reveal here. It is an incredibly satisfying adjustment.

There is the film’s muted cinematography (by Luc Montpellier, who’s worked with Polley before), which I must confess, is a shame. The coloration of the image gives it a chalky, 2000s era Clint Eastwood look. If it’s meant to reinforce the dreariness, then I not only feel it unnecessary, but it seems a particularly obtuse choice, as if the look of the film has less hope for the women than the audience does. This is an otherwise unimpeachable drama. The collected performances are incredible, with the actresses harmonizing (sometimes literally) together to create a vast, complicated portrait of an isolated community. Buckley and Foy get the meatiest parts, and deliver on them, but the tenderness of Mara and Ivey, the humor from McCarthy and the young girls McNeil and Hallet, and the fiery indignation from McLeod, all come together to create the best ensemble performance I’ve seen this year.

 

Written for the Screen and Directed by Sarah Polley