Women Talking

  Two stories in this morning’s paper. In Vancouver BC a young woman police officer killed herself, frustrated at how the department “handled” her complaint that a superior had extorted her for repeated sex. In Alberta the multimillionaire leader of a religious cult is charged with at least four cases of sexually exploiting female members. These stories have nothing to do with Sarah Polley’s masterful film.

Yet everything. Miriam Towes’s source novel was based on a Mennonite cult in Bolivia. The men routinely drugged and raped their women. Imperviously. But this shameful oppression is global, especially in the sexual victimization of women. In cultures with a patriarchal religious authority, their abuse extends into the afterlife. And silences them in this one.

By just presenting “women talking,” the film grows even more radical. The women start sharing their secret torments. They start supporting each other. Worse: they start thinking. They begin to imagine fuller lives for themselves. They realize they cannot entrust their men with the care and education of their children. They debate whether to stay in their community to fight or to leave it.     

Polley’s script is richly circumspect and emotionally realistic in its exploration of women’s options in their restrictive community. As ours are. As Ona remarks, “Hope for the unknown is good. It is better than hatred of the familiar.” So, too, another woman’s concern that “forgiveness” may lead to “permission,” only to perpetuate the evil.

The “action” is the women’s debate on bales of hay in the commune barn. The odd outdoor shots of the women or the children at play barely attenuate the claustrophobic atmosphere, the constriction upon such reined-in women. The film teems with eloquent compositions: a mother and her son walk through a field, touching, together, but separated by a fence.

In this community women are treated as cows — figuratively in their use and literally in their rapists’ tranquilizing. Aptly, one leader draws her lessons from her girl-named horses, who even under harness properly trust their instincts not their driver.

So stark is the treatment of the issues that we can often forget this so dark film is in colour. The women’s debate is intense, the characterizations vivid. Every position has its check and qualification, so that their final decision rings not just proper but inevitable. 

Two male figures refine the film’s ethic, reminding us that “men” don’t have to be “like that.” The community teacher August, appointed to take the meeting minutes, is a soft, sentimental man whose rebellious mother was excommunicated by this colony. Clearly sympathetic to the women, August innocently oversteps his recording function once to give unsolicited advice. He is sensitive to the point of openly weeping. August returned to the colony after university because he probably couldn’t handle the social world outside. He kept a gun for his possible suicide. Here he pledges to try to teach the boys to be proper men, not like their forefathers.   

A more marginal character is even more deeply expressive. The apparently mute “Melvin” pops in and out, helping with the children. But their birth name is “Nettie.” They have  implicitly been traumatized by the men’s response to the character’s true sexual nature.

Tellingly, the film’s best-known star, Francis McDormand, has a minor role —nevertheless compelling. With a facial scare emblematic of her profound submission, she defends the established way to the point of trying to prevent her daughter’s and her little granddaughter’s liberation. 

Much of this film’s beauty lies in its closeups on unenhanced women’s faces, that provide a human landscape of compelling suffering and resolve. These desert faces contrast to the billowing crops. 

So much starts with women talking.