Women Talking, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023, is one of the most underrated movies to be released at the end of 2022. Due to poor timing, it, unfortunately, met a similar fate to Babylon, which ended up becoming a box office failure, and saw low numbers when it was released in December 2022. Despite this, Women Talking was at the top of many top ten lists when it came to 2022 movies, and ended up garnering extensive praise due to the performances, story, and screenplay. It is based on a novel by Miriam Toews, and Sarah Polley directed and wrote the movie.
However, there is something spectacular about Women Talking besides the accolades it is receiving — and will receive. It passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, allowing women the chance to talk about their problems and providing them with the agency to make a decision independent of the men who have run their lives before. By its end, it becomes a remarkable example of women empowerment and solidarity, as well as what it means to escape from a cycle perpetuated by an abuse of power and status. There is a lot of wisdom packed into Women Talking that comes with an emotional realization towards the end.
Giving Voice to Those Without One
Women Talking opens with scenes of the colony it is set within, with a voiceover of one of the girls explaining the context of the situation unfolding in the present moment. It is 2010, and inside an isolated Mennonite colony, the women have realized the men are utilizing cow tranquilizers to sexually assault and rape them in their homes. Two days prior, several men were caught in the act, and the women are outraged. They gather as the men are out of town to post bail for the rapists, and must decide to leave, stay and fight, or stay. Although some think the best decision is to stay, as they believe it is their best chance of going to heaven, the majority are tied between fighting and leaving.
The women in the colony have been denied many things, including agency. Illiterate and unable to write things down, the conversations that come with the discussion are a small snippet of the intelligent and philosophical undertones these women spiritually carry with them every day. Representatives of the families gather in the barn, utilizing their combined wisdom and thought processes to envision the outcomes of what they can do. Before, when their husbands are around, these women are reduced to obedient stereotypes, essentially cattle with the allegory of the cow tranquilizer being used to control them.
Voicelessness and being mute show up in one of the characters: Melvin. Formerly a girl, he was raped and impregnated by whom he suspected to be his brother. Traumatized, he is selectively mute. Melvin’s scenario is the perfect physical embodiment of what happened to the women of the colony. Melvin is left unable to speak at all to anyone but children, despite the situation at hand, and thus cannot be deemed as verbally defiant to the men’s ways. When the women gather to make the final decision of what happens next, their compassion and thinking extend beyond themselves. They acknowledge the voiceless in their community, extending empathy to the male children and teenagers who do not know better due to indoctrination.
A Feminine Story of Resistance
In addition to the more direct forms of resistance, one of the more subtle nuances used in the film is the young girls’ artwork. Throughout the meeting, they interject with giggles, with one of the girls sketching out fellow women in the colony. With August (Ben Whishaw), the sole male participant in the meeting, taking meeting notes and minutes, the only other evidence of the women being there are the images drawn. It is a confirmation that, yes, they are here at that moment, and they were once alive in this space, even if they will no longer be physically present and their belongings are gone. It shows the world from their perspective, even if they were not literate to put it into physical words on a page.
Women Talking is not the perfect example of representation on the screen. Due to its subject matter, everyone in the movie adheres to the majority in filmmaking spaces. However, it is worth noting that this is an important step towards women representation on the screen. The title of the movie is pretty self-explanatory for the plot, but to have a mainstream movie where it is essentially just women discussing their situations in life is incredible. The only male figure who gets extensive screen time is August, and he gracefully bows out whenever he sees fit.
Some might find Women Talking to be boring, but it creates evidence that stories like this exist and are valuable in cinema, even if this narrative is white-centric. The women in it are determined to create a new story for themselves, one where they are willing to fight or leave everything they know behind. “Your story will be different,” the narrator says to a newborn baby, and that is because of the resilience and power of the women who survived. There are endless possibilities as to where the world of movies and television can go next with this knowledge.