Women Talking: A woman’s thoughts

I watched the movie Women Talking four times in two days.

The first time was to hear the stories from the women’s perspectives: to empathize and feel the women’s emotions as portrayed through the characters in the movie: anger; powerlessness; confusion; physical distress (PTSD); disgust; stoic religious forbearance (tolerance) under the guise of forgiveness; hopelessness; innocence lost; moral outrage, ignorance; and the absolute anguish at a mother’s thought that her own son could be a perpetrator.     

The second time was to try and understand the dialogue on a deeper social/cultural and religious level—the questioning; the deep faith of the women under those conditions; how scripture is used; false teaching, pacifism and its implications here; accountability; forgiveness; and the implications as the women grapple with making a decision on who can come if they choose to leave.  

1—Do Nothing. 2—Stay and Fight. 3—Leave

The third time was to listen more closely to the only grown man’s voice or perspective in the movie (as portrayed by female writers) His family, excommunicated from the colony when he was an adolescent because his mother asked questions, his subsequent training off colony, his perspective as a younger boy growing up on the colony; from innocence and curiosity to adolescent appetites, follow the pack mentality, roughhousing/initiation, sexual or physical dominance over weaker boys (implied: “Teenage boys are capable of doing great harm to each other and to the women and girls.”) And finally, his own sacrifice for a greater good: to stay and teach the boys a better way to be a man instead of leaving the colony with the love of his life or giving in to the hopelessness and taking his own.

The fourth time was to revisit the cinematic story: the scenery, the haunting images, the beautiful images the storyteller uses that often get overlooked because of the seriousness of the story and conversations: like the beauty of the landscape, the playful children, the abundant harvest: a child sleeping peacefully on a bed of corn (reminiscent of a picture and story about Mennonites I read as I waited to see my doctor some years ago); the stark face of a mother at the end of the movie as she releases her daughters, but she herself stays behind; and finally, the beautiful areal view of the “Exodus,” the deliverance of the women and children down the narrow road which parts the flowing fields, ripe for the harvest.

I would recommend watching this movie. More than once. The story was well told, in good taste, with effective visuals and a reverence for true faith; dialogue; scripture; sensitive music and the ultimate good: protecting “the least of these.”

I remember talking about these horrific abuses when I first heard about the Manitoba Colony rapes in Bolivia years ago. We discussed it during Sunday school or over coffee with friends. Sexual and physical abuse and the tolerance of it, however, is not just an “Old Mennonite” problem. It is a corrupt, sinful human problem, and it’s everywhere: Haitian Rebels; Boko Haram; Taliban; Religious cults; isolated communities; secular human rights institutions, Hollywood, and in families of all ethnicities.

I asked my Mennonite mother-in-law if she had seen this movie yet. She said she was invited to go to the screening of the movie in Steinbach, but one of her friends refused to go because she did not like Miriam Toews’s portrayal of Mennonites, so she opted not to go alone at that time.

I encouraged her to see it, more than once. And talk about it!