GRETA: What will happen if the men refuse to meet our demands?
ONA: We will kill them.
She is joking. Sort of. Salome seems to like the idea. But Greta raises a good point; will the men share power? And leaving the colony means starting over, somewhere new and strange, without men, at first, but with power and self-sufficiency. Perhaps a new Eden governed by the Golden Rule and love. Leaving also has the value of not forfeiting their chance to get into heaven, as they can remain pacifists. It sounds corny, but these religious off-gridders, if they are not getting raped, can make it happen. Simplicity can be a beautiful thing.
Women Talking is a story about the natural thing we do in a life-threatening crisis: Fight or Flight is built into us, or we freeze. These are instinctual responses associated with survival. Here they are played out in a psychodrama that takes up much of the film. The rules of these games help the participant and observer to figure out what they would do if caught up in the stressor(s) played out. It's a versatile tactic, reminiscent of the plays and games of Auguste Boal (The Theatre of the Oppressed). The discussion by the women over the difference in meaning between "flee" and "leave" is an apt example; words matter. And the talk the women have would make a wonderful activist starter kit. Sans the mans.
Women Talking is a valuable reiteration of the strength of pacifism. One recalls Gandhi and MLK. One recalls A Door Into Ocean (1986), a feminist science fiction novel by Joan Slonczewski that saw a world divided into men constantly at war and a lesbian-esque females who refuse to acquiesce to male violence. We have had tastes of it since the 1960s, with the Occupy movement. But pacifism today is more akin to indifference. This film is didactic that way. Ona (practical progressivism) versus Salome (let's pestle and mortar some face of the rapists).
Women Talking tackles all the big issues that women have been subject to for millennia: abortion; freedom; female ontology; matriarchy as an option; feminist-led democracy; voting; the endless curse of Eve; the unfairness of childbearing; and the nature and limits of forgiveness. The film is about the power of language and its negotiability and inclusivity. And ultimately it's about social and individual empowerment. Choosing with a free will.
The most difficult aspect to settle is religion. Freud saw religion as delusion and as a necessary palliative for an existential reality too difficult to bear without lying to yourself. But for religion, Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche are incredibly suspicious of religion because they all see that as soon as it's institutionalized, religion becomes another fatally flawed human project. It has all the failings of any human project, with corruption, with seduction, with power in the hands of the few, and with individuals handing over their capacity for thinking and determining how their lives should be lived to somebody else who has been given authority over them. Nietzsche and Freud speak to our postmodern age: We can all determine our own lives. And that's what the talking women realize.
The women are forced to make choices about their religion, worldview and their way forward that might not have occurred but for trauma they suffered. The fact is, aside from their choices, it is the choices of the Mennonite men to commit rape -- while the women slept -- that calls into the question the viability and integrity of their community. The seemingly frictionless women are shaken awake from their delusion of belonging to a 'peaceable kingdom' by the unsublimated animal urges of the men.
Frances McDormand plays a minor role in the film and, perhaps, brings her star power to the film in order to bring in viewers (she helped produce the film). But the ensemble cast is quite good, with Rooney Mara as Ona, and Claire Foy as Salome, excellent in leading the passionate discussion about the wrongs they've suffered, the remedies for them, and the collective design of their future together.
Voltaire famously quipped that if God did not exist then it would be necessary to invent one. Because men will f*ck up paradise, if given half a chance, with the violence of an animality they cannot yet evolve from.
And it's a worthwhile passion play in this Women's History Month. Strongly recommended.
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Readers may want to look at the original news reports of the incident. Here's The Guardian's report: 'The work of the devil': crime in a remote religious community (spoiler alert)
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