(CW: sexual assault)
For one brief, beautiful moment, people began taking sexual assault seriously with #metoo. It was a simple concept, meant to illustrate how prevalent sexual assault is, and how there’s no specific type of woman it most impacts. Then it became a tool for mockery, particularly when paired with the vaguer #believewomen and the concept of “canceling” someone. Speaking openly about surviving an assault as a matter of both healing and solidarity suddenly seemed less important than what this meant for men, and if god forbid they had to accept, let alone change something about themselves.
So now we’ve had to return to our group chats, our secret “watch out for this guy” spreadsheets, our little sewing circles where instead of sewing we talk about how old we were the first time a man commented on some part of our bodies (I was 11). We still seek that solidarity, but even sometimes that’s hard to come by, as women struggle with their own innate misogyny, and the guilt, anger and sorrow. Sarah Polley’s Women Talking focuses on one such circle, and how there is no simple, easy fix to the problem of women’s bodies being treated as property to be claimed and abused. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve watched in a while, and this is one of the hardest things I’ve written in a while.
Based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, Women Talking was inspired by a real-life Mennonite colony in Bolivia, where over 100 women of all ages were drugged and assaulted by a group of men, with the assistance of a veterinarian from a neighboring colony, who provided the tranquilizer. Here, the story is moved to an unspecified part of the United States. A number of men in the colony have been arrested for serial sexual assault, which, in a perfect world, would bring an end to a very long nightmare. However, community protocol demands that the women, the victims, must (not should, must) forgive their attackers, lest they be shunned. It’s an only slightly more insidious version of how women are shamed for not accepting a man’s apology for untoward behavior, no matter how insincere it may sound, because he’s already said he’s sorry, what more do you want?
While most of the men of the colony are away either in jail or trying to post bail for those in jail, a group of women gathers together in secret to discuss what to do going forward. There are three options, none of them palatable: forgive the men and continue as though nothing happened, stay and fight, or leave, even though they have no knowledge of the outside world and can’t even read or write. Once “Scarface” Janz (Frances McDormand), the only woman who unequivocally decides that doing nothing is the best response, leaves the discussion, it comes down to a tie: stay and fight for some crumb of acknowledgment that what happened was wrong and cannot happen again, or walk away.
The debate acts as a microcosm for the different ways women address the pervasiveness of sexual assault. Though she never really explains her feelings, it can be assumed that Scarface grimly believes that this is a woman’s lot in life, and talking about it accomplishes nothing. Salome (Claire Foy) is so enraged that she believes she may kill her young daughter’s assailant. On the opposite side, Salome’s sister, Ona (Rooney Mara), a daydreamer optimist pregnant with her assailant’s child, states that she has already forgiven him, and believes that it’s possible for the men of the colony to eventually accept the women as equals.
Mariche (Jessie Buckley) is cynical, believing that the best course of action is to forgive, because they’re trapped and there’s nothing else they can do. She also resents her younger sister, Mejal (Michelle McLeod), for her panic attacks, insisting that they’re just for attention, when it’s better to just suck up the pain and keep it to yourself. Greta (Sheila McCarthy), Mariche and Mejal’s mother, is wracked with guilt over initially encouraging her daughters, particularly Mariche, to forgive and put up with such behavior, time and time again, ensuring that the cycle continues for generations to come. The gentle voice of reason in all this is Agata (Judith Ivey), Salome and Ona’s mother, who reminds them that vengeance and violence are against their faith, but also that they cannot stay in this situation any longer.
They are all right, at least in some way. Even the cold Scarface isn’t a villain, she’s just taken what she perceives to be the easiest route. Everybody’s approach to the concept of “forgiveness” (Mariche’s out of obligation, Ona’s based in empathy, Salome’s refusal to do so) is understandable and relatable. I have forgiven my assailant, mostly because he’s dead1 and it’s not healthy to harbor hate in your heart for someone who can’t hurt you anymore. What I struggle with is the people around us when this was happening, who maybe didn’t know exactly what was going on, but should have noticed that there was something wrong with me. How was it not noticed that in the course of less than five years, I went from a child who talked so much that a teacher affectionately referred to me as “Jabberjaws2” to someone who talked so little I was sent to therapy about it?
How did no one see that I started having trouble sleeping (and still do), and that I reacted to having to be alone with any adult man other than my father or grandfather with visible discomfort? How did it go unremarked upon, other than maybe I was “kind of weird,” that I developed an obsession with death and dying? This is what I can’t move past, we see all the signs of such things occurring, and do nothing. But it’s easy to see why — because sexual assault claims are always minimized, questioned, discounted. Accepting how many women have been sexually assaulted means accepting how many men have committed sexual assault (because, y’know, it’s not all one guy), and, as the saying goes, we’re not ready to have that conversation yet. That’s a lot of forgiving, and maybe the capacity to forgive is far more finite than we like to think.
So yes, I see something of me in all of the characters in Women Talking, and that is a remarkable thing. I recognize Salome’s blazing fury, and Ona’s perhaps naïve belief that everyone is capable of changing for the better. I recognize Mariche’s cynicism, and Mejal’s anxiety. I would like to be the beacon of comfort that Agata is, and remember that there are enough beautiful things in the world to balance the pain. I want to apologize to younger women, who have been so failed by women of my generation and those before me. I want someone to apologize to me like Greta does to her daughters, with sincerity, and not just so I’ll shut up and talk about something else.
I guess I got a little off-track, and haven’t talked much about Women Talking as a film. For a movie with no action, staged like a one-set play, it’s remarkably absorbing. About halfway through, a census taker blaring “Daydream Believer” out of his car drives through the colony, reminding the audience that, despite the colony’s old-fashioned ways, all of this takes place in the present (well, 2010, but close enough). It’s a jolting moment, one that feels like Polley is making sure the audience is both paying attention, and understands that this issue doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The colony may be closed off to the rest of the world, but it’s not immune to the world’s problems.
There is, thankfully, little interest in the details of what the women experienced, just brief flashbacks of their waking up and finding themselves bruised and bloodied. Confrontations are limited to the women arguing with each other, and the sole cis man3, August (Ben Whishaw), is there solely to take the minutes of the meeting, and harshly berated by Mariche when he offers his opinion before being asked for it. It's a wonderfully cathartic moment, as Mariche takes the opportunity to speak up without fear of admonishment, or being told that she should calm down.
Though a decision is firmly made, Women Talking ends on a soberly ambiguous note. We have no idea if they’ve decided to do the right thing. It certainly seems to be the right thing at that particular moment, but who can say if they’ll feel the same once they’ve had some more time to think. In the end, as much as we like to think we can, we can’t decide what’s best for other people, or judge what they need to do to survive in this world. But acknowledgment that something has to be done is at least a good start. It can’t go on. It can’t go on like this.
No, I didn’t kill him.
Kids, ask your parents.
There’s also Melvin (August Winter), a transgender man whom the movie doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with, but as a cis person, I’m not qualified to elaborate on that.