Photo: Michael Gibson/Orion Releasing LLC
I once asked a friend if she remembered the moment she left. In her first few seconds, she physically and finally separated herself from her ex-husband who had abused her for years. Did she feel her victory? Are you scared? It seemed monumental. Surely her memory would have kept it. She couldn’t remember. She finds to her surprise that she cannot remember the moment she broke up with her husband. My marriage at 19 was not abusive, but the catalyzing events (pregnancy and miscarriage) were devastating in another way. After 14 years, I realize I got married out of a lack of imagination. After growing up under the social conventions of the Church and the Bible her belt, I couldn’t envision myself a different kind of life.
Sarah Polley captures the gravity of leaving in her new film. women’s story, an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel. When I first heard about the project, I read the book and admired it, but I never thought I would be able to see it. Inspired by real-life women and girls who are drugged and raped by a group of men and forced to believe it was a ghost or Satan who perpetrated them. It’s just an act of “wild woman imagination”. In 2009, he confessed to raping nine men, and in 2011, seven of her sentenced her to 25 years in prison. (The eighth was sentenced to 12 years for supplying an anesthetic spray designed for livestock, and the ninth escaped.) Officially, 130 people aged 3 to her 65 Women and girls were raped, although the actual number is likely higher.
It’s a terrifying story, and this movie probably arrives just when many of us are at the peak of “Me Too movie” fatigue. Lying on the floor, the sheets were pulled to reveal her injured leg — it made me consider giving up before I even started. . women’s story It’s not about suffering at the hands of patriarchy. It’s about imagining a future beyond patriarchy.
As its title suggests, the film is almost entirely based on dialogue. While the men in the colonies leave her for two days (to bail the rapist out of prison and bring him home), the woman must choose between her three options: do nothing, stay and fight. , or leave. In case of tie votes, female representatives from the three families are appointed to make decisions for all.
Boys’ school teacher August Epp (Ben Whishaw) records a girls’ night out at the request of Ona (Rooney Mara), a single woman who is several months pregnant by a rapist. The girls were not taught to read and write in the colonies, but their conversations never became philosophical, poetic, or intense because of the illiteracy of women.
The film’s celebrated cast (Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, and Jessie Buckley joining Mara and Whishaw) can carry these conversations very well. If you, like me, doubt that a film based on a dialogue book (which takes place almost entirely in a haystack) is not suitable for cinema, then you, like me, are sorely mistaken. .
Of course, women’s conversations are attractive. Of course, these conversations are fascinating. To decide whether to stay and fight or leave the only home, women talk about God and salvation, about when boys grow from defenseless children to potential threats, about becoming women, mothers and wives. You have to ponder how. Can they forgive men? If not, are their souls doomed? Are the attackers also victims of the patriarchal environment and therefore innocent? If you could build a colony, what would it be like? Where will they go if they leave? They have never seen a world map or even their own region.
The dialogue is heavy and tense, often heated, but occasionally lightly depressed.Toews is a master of tragicomedy, and Polley, who also wrote the script, clearly recognizes her talent. I’ve never seen an adaptation that removed so many lines from the original.
Still, given the weight of the subject matter (i.e., the weight of reality), I mostly left the film satisfied that it was less emotionally invested than I expected, although I praised the performances and cinematography. rice field. But then comes the woman’s conclusion, and Paulie’s cinematic vision sublimely reveals itself. Of course, I’m talking about the moment of leaving.
Toews’ novel is written from August’s point of view, so as you read the book, you can observe the women leaving from afar. In a few sentences, the woman was gone.
In Pauly’s film, the leaving moment stretches over 11 minutes. (You could say it started earlier, but I started my stopwatch with an informative phrase: “I’m going now.”). This time with a woman. We are with them from the beginning.
This moment of leaving feels just as unsettling and vulnerable. Where will these women and children go and how can they thrive with limited resources? Who will they meet on the streets and will these strangers bring salvation or ruin?
Then the camera pans out to see the entire caravan continue on through a dirt road bend, and we are comforted by the numbers. not.
women’s story Arriving on the “Me Too Movie” wave, she said When tar Latest installments.Points that feel markedly different women’s story While the opponent is looking back (she said About Harvey Weinstein bomb at Roger Ailes assistant about Hollywood’s toxic and misogynistic work culture), the film looks ahead.I have no intention of taking revenge. promising young womanI’m not interested in villains. tarSometimes shots are flashed to match horrific attacks, although it’s clear that many women are still traumatized by what they’ve been through. women’s story We are determined to look to the future, not just the near future, but literally and figuratively. “Did you know that some butterflies and dragonflies migrate for a very long time?” asks Ona.
I myself may not be able to remember the moment I left – for many of us it is a series of goodbyes, a long and painful departure – but leaving one world for another I remember feeling uncertain and optimistic. still exists. I remember the difficult and exhilarating task of creating a new set of rules and structures, an evolving manifesto shaped by conversations with other women.
“When we free ourselves, we’ll have to ask who we are,” says Ona. They didn’t let us go. We have to do the work ourselves.When women’s story, Paulie, pried open something I didn’t even realize was sealed inside me. For the first time in a long time, he felt the turmoil of progress.
