Women Talking is the sort of movie I normally would have seen in theaters as soon as I could. But in the wake of the pandemic, I find myself going to the theater less often. What was once something I did as much as three times a week now comes down to once some weeks, and that’a assuming there’s something there I really want to see. It’s getting mildly harder to get myself to want to go when in the past I would have pre-ordered tickets for the weekend the Wednesday before. Somehow, that meant I didn’t head out to see Women Talking. I’ll chalk it up to getting used to just staying home some weekends when I used to go out just to see a movie.
However, Women Talking is available on Amazon Prime for subscribers for a limited time, probably to get people to see it before the Academy Awards this weekend.
Set in 2010 in a Amish-style religious colony–Wikipedia says they’re Mennonites–the movie focuses on a group of (mostly) women who hold a vote and then have a meeting. The women have realized that the men have been using cow tranquilizer to knock them out and then sexually assault them. This apparently has been going on for quite some time, but they were always told by the men, or at least the elders, that the many resulting bruises were the result of ghosts or demons, and presumably the same is true for the many pregnancies. However, this time was different because one of the women was conscious enough to see her obviously mortal attacker, and after he and another man were arrested by the local authorities, most of the men of the colony gathered money to head off into the outside world to post bail. The women, as a result, have two days to decide on what to do. They were told they need to forgive the men or face exile. They have no intentions of doing so.
Instead, they hold a vote, something that would seem difficult given they are all illiterate. They have three choices: do nothing, fight, or leave. “Do nothing” is not an option, so a smaller group of women gather to discuss the other two options. As it is, they range in opinions and temperament from the fighting mad Mariche (Jessie Buckley) to the traditionalist Scarface (Frances McDormand) to the more idealistic Ona (Rooney Mara), who is herself unmarried and pregnant following one of these attacks. The only men left behind are themselves outcasts. August’s (Ben Whishaw) mother was herself excommunicated and forced out, but he was invited back to teach the boys as he actually has a college education. As for Melvin (August Winter), he’s a trans man who went silent after a miscarriage that happened after his own sexual assault pre-transition. What will these women collectively decide to do?
It’s not hard to see why this movie is up for Best Picture. It’s smart, well-acted, and creates great drama considering it really is mostly women talking. It helps that the women are in many ways very vivid and different characters, as seen from the ways they talk to each other or even just the way they treat August either as someone who has earned the right to speak at the meeting or to merely keep minutes. These are women without any sort of formal education and who still believe in the colony’s religion. That means, despite everything that happened to them, they stop to question whether they can get salvation if they don’t do as they’re told and grant forgiveness to their attackers. But the more they talk, the more they realize that there’s something more important going on here: if they don’t find a way to fix their problem, there’s a good chance their young sons will turn out just like the absent adult men are when it comes to how they treat women.
And then there’s the other angle: this movie strikes me as being about more than just one religious colony in the middle of nowhere. These women talk about how the men in power, the elders, created this situation, and as a result, the men below them and even the boys have been poisoned by the belief that women are there just for the pleasure of the men and that consent is not necessary. If that’s not a comment on the real world and how some men treat women, I don’t know what is. Plus, it really helps that the movie is as good as it is. It’s not my pick for Best Picture, but I don’t trust the Oscars to get it right anyway.
Grade: A
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