The film is based on true events in a Mennonite colony in the 2000s, but it was shot in the shadow of #MeToo. It’s a film that couldn’t exist without movement.
I’ve been waiting for “Women Talking” for five years, since 87 women accused Harvey Weinstein of assault or harassment in 2017 and sparked unprecedented conversations about sexual misconduct. Not this movie in particular, but this kind of movie.
I wondered what art would come out of #MeToo, once the dust settled on the account. What kind of stories would we tell about it? And how would these stories explain to its viewers what the reckoning meant in the first place?
This fall brought an answer – or three of them. “Women Talking” will arrive in theaters nationwide on December 23. “Tár,” in which a renowned conductor confronts her history of problematic relationships with mentees, premiered in November. It opened the same weekend as “She Said,” which reenacts the events that led to Weinstein’s downfall. Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan play the New York Times reporters who broke the story, painstakingly collecting the stories of abused actresses and assistants.
I watched all three movies in the span of 24 hours, which I don’t recommend in terms of psychic toll, but do recommend if you’re trying to make sense of the past five years. What they told us about sex, power, and what we’re all supposed to have learned.
Watch “She Said” first. It’s a great movie. Big production company, big stars. Ashley Judd, the first of Weinstein’s accusing celebrities to be recorded, plays herself. It’s the most “Hollywood” of the three movies, which makes sense given it’s a Hollywood movie. There’s clearly a villain and clear heroes: Like Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in “All the President’s Men,” Mulligan and Kazan play the platonic ideals of tough, stubborn, scrupulously righteous journalists.
The stakes are also clear: for the New York Times to publish the story, reporters need at least one victim to register, but all the women are too afraid to have their names printed. Someone must come forward to break the dam of silence. So when Judd, in a monologue that feels both authentic in its emotion and breathtaking in its wording, finally says she’s ready to speak publicly, Zoe Kazan bursts into tears.
This is the bone of the #MeToo movement as you remember it and as high school teachers might describe it to their students a decade from now: a famous man abused women, who had no power to talk about. Finally, they found the courage to share their stories, how much they learned that they were not alone. Many women had been abused and harassed, and when the country finally started to listen to them, things got better.
“She Said” will make you angry, then cheer you up. If you are a journalist like me, this will make you love your job. What I don’t think it will necessarily do is make you think. It’s an easy film about a difficult subject.
“Tár” is a harder film. This is not a brutal assault from a man who weighs twice what his victims do. This is something more devious and more complicated. Lydia Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, favors hiring pretty assistants and musicians. When she inevitably sleeps with them, her lovers may seem willing, but the power imbalance is inevitable and pronounced. When she is done with them, she cruelly dumps them and badmouths them to potential future employers.
The choice to cast a woman as the aggressor initially frustrated me – avoiding gender means ignoring the historical dynamics behind so many instances of harassment. But that bypass ends up giving way to another truth that #MeToo has taught us: it’s not that men are bad. It’s that uncontrolled power creates a cesspool. One scene keeps sticking in my mind. Lydia is waiting to go on stage for a show. His assistant approaches. Without ever making eye contact, Lydia reaches out expectantly to receive a pill and a glass of water, and after swallowing them, returns the glass without emitting a thank you or once acknowledging the assistant’s presence. .
This is not the behavior of a sexual predator per se, but of a genius long pampered to the point of having to care about the feelings or inner lives of his subordinates. And everyone, once you reach their singular talent level, is a subordinate.
The fictional Lydia Tár could do what she did for the same reason the real Harvey Weinstein could get away with what he got away with, because the enablers in his field decided artistic genius was a get out of jail card for evil. behaviour. The sexual impropriety was hidden. But the environment that enabled the abuses was plainly visible: an unhealthy deference to power and an unwillingness to question what people were doing with that power behind closed doors.
We know better now. Is not it?
As I wrote these final paragraphs, prosecutors in a Los Angeles courtroom began closing arguments in Harvey Weinstein’s second trial. Already convicted in New York and sentenced to 23 years, Weinstein has spent the past five weeks in California standing trial on additional rape charges.
The alleged victims of this trial in Los Angeles described incidents that were both horrifying and, by now, familiar. One testified that the former film producer held her down while he masturbated on top of her. Another said she “wanted to die” after her alleged assault. California First Lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom broke down in tears when she saw Weinstein on the witness stand and later told the jury how she faked an orgasm just to stop Weinstein’s alleged attack.
Weinstein’s attorney, in his opening arguments, tried to argue that these were consensual, albeit transactional, encounters. The Hollywood way of doing business. Like powerful men had always done business in Hollywood.
And as I wrote this last paragraph, another jury from the same Los Angeles courthouse returned from deliberations to say they simply could not reach a verdict on another case of rape – the sexual assaults that the former ‘That’ actor 70s Show” Danny Masterson has been charged with committing acts on three women. The judge declared the trial null and void.
“We are obviously disappointed that, at least for now, Daniel Masterson has escaped criminal responsibility for his deplorable acts,” read a statement released by the alleged victims.
“It’s a true testament to our justice system that jurors were able to see through all the incendiary noise and focus only on what was truly important,” read a statement released by Masterson’s attorney.
The alleged assaults in these cases occurred 15 and 20 years ago. Justice was long and messy. In many cases – for famous victims of famous men and non-famous victims of non-famous men – this remains unresolved.
Historical films about the #MeToo era cannot be like historical films about WWII or the Apollo moon landing, because unlike wars or moon landings, there is no definitive end to this era , no treaty that allocates land or money to the women of the country. We are still struggling.
Once you’ve watched “She Said” and “Tár,” watch “Women Talking.” It’s the shortest of the three films, but it reserved an entire afternoon. Plan to see him with someone; plan to have a long chat afterwards.
Here’s why: Minutes after Claire Foy bursts into the farm shed with a scythe, the film spins right. Foy’s character is removed before she can actually assassinate the villains. This is not a story of bloody revenge.
Instead, the perpetrators are taken to town for their own protection, and the women of the colony sit down to decide what to do next. Forgive their assailants, as the leadership of the colony asked them to do? Campaign for change? Leave? The women speak. Throughout the rest of the film, they talk.
They talk about what it would mean to forgive and what it would mean to make men pay. They say how unfair it is that the woman should be asked to find a solution, when the bad guys are the ones who created the problem.
And what is a “bad guy”, anyway? The rapists were not strangers; they were the women’s own brothers, uncles, friends. Most of the men in the colony didn’t do anything wrong – but again, they accepted the patriarchal system that kept these women illiterate and dependent, so maybe they did something wrong after all? The women decided that if they left, they would bring the children of the colony with them. But when do male children stop being the little boys they try to shape and love, and start being the men they try to escape?
This film is not about male misdeeds. It is not about the agony of women. It’s not even about justice, be it punitive or restorative, as it is in “She Said”. It’s not about the dark and gray areas of power, like “Tár”.
The movie is about how hard it is to envision a new world, when the old world is the only one you’ve ever lived in. It’s about how recovery is psychic, but at some point it’s also practical. What decisions need to be made to fix a broken society?
The women in the film are feeling their way and, I think, we are too.
