THB @ Telluride 4: Women Talking (written)

Women Talking may end up being the most demanding film of this year’s Telluride. This is not unexpected from Sarah Polley.

Start with the premise. The women of a small religious community are being incapacitated and raped by the men of the community, often with great brutality.

But the film is clearly not about small religious communities or the men or really even, rape. All of these elements are part of the film, but they are all manifestations of bigger, more universal questions.

In fact, the structural and character foundations of the film and all that they are not creates the springboard to be more than you would expect. How can a world so small support questions so big?

Polley, who wrote the script from Miriam Toews’ book, has a lot to say about women… the wide range of women… the flexibility of women… the emotional willingness of women… the pragmatism of women.

I suspect that the first glance at Women Talking, at any altitude, is just the beginning of the experience. First, you have to wrangle with the structure. It feels, especially in the first act, like a play on film. But this dissipates as the movie progresses and we in the audience built relationships with each of the characters and we can both anticipate and be surprised by the arguments each woman (and the one speaking man) make.

It feels like Arthur Miller, to a degree. But Polley is more ambitious (and often, more successful) than Miller. This is about the nature women. Giant subject.

Religion has a big footprint in the story, as the women are mostly uneducated outside of religion. But like the setting, the unclear period, and the functional disinterest in both the men and the mechanisms and details of the abuses/rapes it’s not about religion. It’s about faith.  It’s about community. It’s about choices.

The longer the film goes on, the more you can sense that it isn’t about a them - uneducated women in a tiny religious community - it’s about us. It’s about what women in the world are before and then and now.

And interestingly, it’s not about the nature and abuses of men. Those exist in the film and are a piece of the conversation, but the film looks at most men in the context of these women… and ultimately, how the women can impact (or not impact) them.

It did strike me as really interesting that one of the actresses, Jesse Buckley, recently starred in Men, which lingers almost perversely in the excesses of me and is much more about men (all played by Rory Kinnear), but still is about one woman and how she sees herself in their perspective.

The cast for the film is stellar. For me, the best onscreen work of Claire Foy. Buckley, as powerful as expected. Thrilled to spend time with Judith Ivey, who gives a performance that just grows and grows and grows. I’ve been a fan of Ms Ivey, on stage and screen, for 40 years. Any role you think of Judi Dench or Susan Sarandon for, especially the comedies, should have her as the next thought.

Rooney Mara is the pivot of the entire film, really. She is pregnant in the film and has a long, unacted-upon relationship with the one speaking male in the film, played by the emotional springboard known as Ben Wishaw. She is the most ambitious woman in the group. She is the only one who has a real relationship with a thoughtful man. She is allowed to see empathetically through the eyes of all of these women. Polley manages to keep her from being judgmental, even though she is intellectually curious and will ask questions clearly and sharply, sometimes offending. She is not, as one might expect, The Answer.

This is the essence of what makes Polley’s work here so remarkable. (And I might add, her entire directing career.) She is a director who doesn’t assume to know everything. She seems in her work to always be asking herself questions, even though there is almost never any question about her firm hand on the tiller.

Women Talking is unlikely to be a runaway hit. It asks too much of it audience. It asks the audience think and rethink and rethink again about what they are seeing… what conversation they are being asked to engage.

For me, that is the most daring and valuable and unusual thing in filmmaking, especially in America (and sometimes Toronto).

Until the next review…