Women Talking

 

Do nothing. Stay and fight. Or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling a brutal reality with their faith.

The movie Women Talking is based on Miriam Toews's 2018 novel of the same name, which was in turn based on a true story of vicious serial rapes in an insular, ultraconservative Mennonite community in Bolivia. From 2005 to 2009, nine men in the remote Manitoba Colony, using livestock tranquilizers, drugged female victims ranging in age from three to sixty and violently raped them at night. When the girls and women awoke bruised and covered in blood, the men of the colony dismissed their reports as delusions--even when they became pregnant from the assaults--or punishments from God or by demons for their supposed sins. According to a May 2019 BBC article by Linda Pressly, when the rapists were finally caught, they were arrested by Bolivian authorities. One fled from justice, but the other eight were tried and convicted. Seven were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for the repeated, multiple rapes, and an eighth was convicted for providing the drug but then released. A 2013 Vice article by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky revealed that the druggings and rapes did not stop with those particular men's arrest; she also reported that some of the men had also raped some men and boys in the colony.-IMBd

Director Sarah Polley explained more about the colour grading of the film, explaining how they played with saturation levels to create a feeling of "a world that had faded in the past". This is why the film appears to be almost black-and-white, but not quite.

Truly, the movie brings a lot to the viewer with costumes, to the playlist of songs used in the movie. It really is a remarkable movie with many levels of insightful meaning from the beginning to the end. Yes, definitely a movie to talk about.

It just might get you talking. As one co-worker told me the book and movie are perfect for her next book club meeting. The author Miriam Toews and director Sarah Polley wrote the screenplay. So it's a real woman's movie. It is also nominated for two Academy Awards. Maybe it will be THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR.

Base on a true story: Although many Mennonite communities are less restrictive than the one depicted in this movie, the actual colony on which this movie is based (the Manitoba Mennonite community in Bolivia) is ultraconservative: unlike some other Mennonite groups they do not allow electricity, telephones, or automobiles. Like the women in the movie, the women in the real-life Manitoba colony are not allowed to learn to read.-IMBd