Sarah Polley not being in this year's Best Director contention at the Oscars is blasphemous in my opinion. What she accomplishes here as both writer and director is nothing short of extraordinary. Adapted from Women Talking with fierce intellect and immense force, this is a film that understands the radical power of conversation. It reminds us that language is not passive. Language is action.
For God knows how long, the women of an isolated religious community have been drugged with cow tranquilizer and raped during the night. They were told it was ghosts. Demons. Satan punishing them for their own improprieties. They believed that lie until the truth could no longer be contained. With several of the men arrested and others away attempting to secure bail, the women are left unsupervised for roughly forty eight hours. In that time, they must decide their future. Do nothing. Stay and fight. Leave.
On paper, this sounds like a chamber piece. A barn. A circle of women. A vote. It could have easily become static or theatrical in the worst sense. Instead, Polley infuses every frame with urgency and moral gravity. The film never feels like bonneted fundamentalists chatting in a barn, even though that is largely what it is. From the opening moments, which place the violence firmly in the past and focus on what comes next, the story takes on the sweep of a moral fable. It is intimate and expansive all at once.
The ensemble is spellbinding. Claire Foy delivers a performance that might be my favorite of this decade. There is rage in her, yes, but also a bruised intelligence that makes every line cut deeper. Jessie Buckley is ferocious and heartbreaking in equal measure, embodying a woman who refuses to let her pain be intellectualized away. Rooney Mara brings a trembling quiet to the screen, a spiritual conflict that feels almost unbearable to watch. Even in stillness, she radiates internal turmoil.
And then there is Frances McDormand, who does more with three minutes of screen time and one stern look than most actors will do in their entire careers. It is a masterclass in presence. A reminder that gravity does not require volume.
The film unfolds like a procedural of conscience, almost in the likeness of 12 Angry Men, except here the jury is composed of women who have been systematically silenced their entire lives. Polley is acutely aware of how to move her camera within confined space. She knows precisely when to let a wide frame hold the collective and when to push into close ups so wrenching they feel like confessions whispered directly into your ear. She lives inside the faces of her actors. You see belief cracking in real time. You see doubt take root. You see anger metabolize into clarity.
The score by Hildur Guðnadóttir is nothing short of sublime. I really cannot stop raving about it. It carries both unease and tenderness, swelling at the precise moments when words fail and something more elemental takes over. There are scenes where the music feels like breath itself, holding the women upright as they articulate the unspeakable.
If I have a reservation, it lies in some of the editing choices. At times the rhythm feels slightly uneven, as though certain beats linger a touch too long while others rush forward. It is never fatal, but there are moments where the craft draws attention to itself in a way that slightly disrupts the immersion. Even so, the totality of the emotional power is overwhelming.
There is something about overtly feminist media that can provoke a reflexive eye roll among younger audiences. A suspicion of pandering. A fatigue with slogans. I confess I felt a flicker of that cynicism before seeing this. It vanished almost immediately. Women Talking is not a slogan. It is a reckoning.
What moved me most is how the film reframes strength. Strength is not brash confidence performed for applause. It is endurance. It is carrying trauma while braiding a child’s hair. It is continuing to feed animals and mend clothes while your world fractures. It is choosing, collectively, what kind of future the next generation will inherit. There is a line spoken to a child about how their story will be different. That promise feels both fragile and defiant.
The desaturated palette has drawn criticism for being too bleak, but I found its muted grays appropriate. This is not a film about aesthetic beauty. The beauty lies in the rawness of the women themselves, in the way they wrestle with faith, forgiveness, rage, and responsibility. Religion here is both wound and anchor. It complicates every argument. It forces the women to ask not only what is safe, but what is righteous.
By the time the film reaches its final movements, I was well and truly floored. There is immense power in its simplicity. I left reflective, devastated, and strangely inspired. Women Talking is about a specific event in a specific community, but it resonates far beyond those walls. It is about the courage required to name harm. It is about how translating internal feelings into words can clear a path forward.
This is cinema as moral inquiry. Cinema as communal act. It has been a while since I have been this moved by a film.
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