Talking Points

Of the 10 nominees for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture, Women Talking was not the last one I saw; in fact, I caught it several weeks ago. But I decided after watching it that I wasn't going to blog about it... until and unless I'd seen all 9 of the other contenders. That's because I didn't think that my opinion -- a largely negative one -- actually mattered.

Women Talking is writer-director Sarah Polley's adaptation of a novel by Miriam Toews. The story in both mediums is inspired by real-life events in a Mennonite community in Bolivia. (The movie is vague about exactly where it takes place, though when is given to audience at one point: 2010.) The story is straightforward: after years of sexual abuse at the hands of the men in their community, the women band together to decide on a response: fight back, or leave their home.

At the core of this story are true horrors, an emotionally charged blend of sexism and abuse and control. So I found it quite jarring how oddly formal and heightened the film itself was. At every turn, this feels like a stage play. The often prim language would feel right at home in the theater. The dramatic construction of a half-dozen-or-so characters together in one room to resolve one issue is bread-and-butter for playwrights. The venue of a barn loft could easily be suggested by a stage set that presented the environment in a spartan manner, matching the tone of the piece.

Now one could argue that this unusual formality is realistic -- for a religiously homogeneous community in general, and for the oppressed women in it specifically. You could also argue the formalism as the artistic choice of a writer-director wielding their authorial control over their movie; you can take it or leave it. But I must choose "leave it"; I felt like the movie kept me at arm's length the entire time, and that felt to me at odds with the subject matter.

Yet the title of the movie rang in my ears as I walked out of the theater. This is Women Talking. There is, appropriately, just one male character of note in the film -- and he spends the entire movie, appropriately, sublimating his own thoughts and feelings to those of the women around him. He's also played by openly gay actor Ben Whishaw, further underlining a key point here: that what any man thinks about this isn't at issue, no matter what their relationship to women. So I was planning to do I was told: keep quiet and let the women talk.

But now here we are: I've seen (and written about) every other Best Picture nominee this year -- something I don't always manage, and harder still to do in a year with 10 nominees. In that context, not writing about Women Talking seemed bad, as though to imply "oh, that movie about the Women Talking; yeah, no, I wanted to see everything else, but not that one."

There are good performances all over this movie -- most critically from Rooney Mara and Claire Foy (though Jessie Buckley is also strong in a supporting role). Frances McDormand is here for a weirdly minor performance... but as she co-produced the movie, it would seem she chose that for herself. Really, the whole cast is good... within the odd sense of regimented and theatrical behavior that Sarah Polley seems to have been deliberately going for.

So I'll just close by saying that this movie didn't work for me. And that doesn't matter. I'm curious to hear from others who might have seen it, but it's the kind of arthouse-centric release that hasn't widely been seen. Still... I'll sit back and wait for others to talk.