The Will of the Women

The publicity I saw for Women Talking made it out to be like 12 Angry Men except the men are women and there are fewer than 12 of them. Still angry, though. It's an apt comparison. Instead of a jury deliberating the fate of a defendant, here we have a group of women deliberating over whether they and the other women (and girls and younger boys) of a Mennonite colony should leave it. You see, the women and at least some of the girls have been drugged and raped by some of the men of the colony. The rapists were arrested but now the colony's men have gone to the city to post bail for them and expect the victims to forgive them unconditionally. This leaves the women a couple of days to determine whether to stay or leave.

A group of women gather to deliberate and quickly the Frances McDormand contingent abandon the deliberations saying that they intend to stay as the colony is their home and they know nothing else. The remaining women are left to hash things out.

Pros and cons are weighed, fears for the futures of their sons arise, and apologies are offered as they look back at their time in the colony. The younger women let their passions loose more easily than the older women who try to keep the deliberations on course and whose comments add an occasional dose of levity.

Rooney Mara is Ona and her big eyes and warm face are the anchor here. She loves August, a man who had previously left the colony but has been repatriated and is now a school teacher, and he her. August has been enlisted to take the minutes of their meeting. He and Ona's shared affections stand in contrast to the attitudes of seemingly the rest of the men in the colony.

The centerpiece here is a group of smart, strong women trying to figure out their fate and the fate of dozens of others. But we also have a couple of symbolic characters. August may be a man but, tellingly, he did not go to town to help post bail. He is presented as being rather feminine. He is very meek and he cries. 

His counterpart is Melvin, a woman who was raped and lost her child. I forgot how it is phrased in the movie but she assumed the identity of a man after enduring the traumas. Changed her name, cut her hair, and began wearing suspenders. When Melvin was introduced, I thought she might be a kind of Tiresias figure who could lecture from both sides. But it turned out she became a mute.

While I think the Melvin-August duo was a lost opportunity to toss around ideas of gender, the fact remains that drama at the center of the story was powerful and moving.