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Film Review: Women Talking (2022)

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book cover Women Talking
book cover Women Talking
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Women Walking the Talk

by John Kendall Hawkins

In the oft-told tale, Puritans arrived in colonial America in the early 1600s. These zealots had been a bane to England -- even Shakespeare felt their wrath toward corrupting influences and feared their movement to close down the Globe Theatre -- and they were essentially exiled to the Continent. Eventually, they sailed to America and New England was settled by these religious dissenters seeking to build a Bible-based society according to their own chosen discipline. [F.J. Bremer]

Some of these religious extremists set up a village in Salem, where their more superstitious beliefs eventually came to the fore in the form of the literal presence of demons and witches in human life -- a view that goes all the way back to Eden and the Temptation foisted upon Eve by Satan. The human exile from paradise was accomplished by ignoring the Law set down by God. And He blamed Eve.

The Puritans were intent on returning to the Garden by means of strict adherence to Biblical principles designed to show their contrition. It's a noble cause not easily accomplished, with the Amish being an example of the kind of sub-culture seeking rapprochement with God through contrition, simple works, and devotion. But there is backsliding and backstabbing and outbreaks of 'evil' that bring crises and can threaten the integrity of the community's holy purpose.

The Salem witchcraft outbreak, between February 1692 and May 1693, which saw 200 people accused of witchcraft and 19 executed, was one such crisis. The story goes that some girls accidentally imbibed ergot and became hallucinatory and convulsive, scaring the bejeezus out of the Puritans. Fingers were pointed, scores were settled, as simple folks became possessed by their own fear of the Devil. Once again, the women were blamed; some of the Elders threw up their hands, crying, Oy Vey.

The 2022 film, Women Talking, depicts a community of puritans -- Mennonites who had fled the mainstream in Bolivia, going off-grid to establish a remote colony (Manitoba Colony) where they could practice their religious conservatism. The Mennonites are extreme pacifists who operate by Christ's Golden Rule to turn the other cheek when harmed by the Other and to love with all our might in response. In the film, a group of women in the colony have this teaching devilishly confronted.

Women Talking was directed by Sarah Polley, who also wrote the screenplay, which was based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. It stars actors largely unknown to American cinema-goers, including Rooney Mara (Ona), Tony award winner Judith Ivey (Agata), Kate Hallett (Autje), Claire Foy (Salome), Sheila McCarthy (Greta), Jessie Buckley (Mariche), Ben Wishaw (August) and, in what amounts to a cameo appearance, Frances McDormand (Scarface Janz). Polley won the 2023 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The story is inspired by true, contemporary events that took place at the Manitoba Colony in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009, when Mennonite women woke to discover bruises and scars on their bodies and knew that they had been raped, and, in some cases, impregnated. These rapes numbered in the hundreds. In a voice over, August, a young man in love with Ona (impregnated by rape), and acting as a recorder when the women convene to discuss what to do, recounts what happened and how the colony men responded:

When the women woke up feeling drowsy and in pain, their bodies bruised and bleeding, many believed they were being made to suffer as punishment for their sins. Many accused the women of lying for attention or to cover up adultery.

Ona tells the women, "They said we were dreaming. But then we realized that we were dreaming one dream and it wasn't a dream at all." And Salome adds, "They told us that it was Satan. Or the result of wild female imagination." There is this gross, repeated trauma for the women, followed by the absurd male accusation that all the women are liars. The women have vague nightmarish flashbacks of the events, during which the screenplay visual cue direction is:

The flashbacks of trauma will be shot at 15fps and there will be a "roar" over these scenes, animal and/or machine-like.

It turns out the rapes-while-sleeping have been enabled by drugging the women with belladonna spray. So that the women can't wake up. They literally don't know how it has happened to them. So, the women are dealing with three soul-shaking traumas: male rape, male rejection of their accounts, and the mystery of how God could allow such an atrocity -- even if it had been a "test" of their faith.

In the opening scenes, in the middle of the night, the women catch a rapist attempting to break in and give chase. Cornered, one of the women attacks him, They get him to tell who the other men are. There's eight of them. The presumption that the rapists were off-colony proves to be a savage epiphany. Mennonites did it! The men are handed over to the Elders and the cops are called to take them away to be dealt with by the Bolivian authorities. Another crisis ensues. August's voice over tells us:

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John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelance journalist and poet currently residing in Oceania.

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