Review
Culture
Trauma
5 min read

The overwhelm

What follows is an act of female emancipation. Belle Tindall reviews the Oscar-winning Women Talking.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

a group of women stand and sit around a table lit by a gas lamp.
Women Talking's lead characters meet together.
Universal Pictures.

A trigger-warning to our readers: this article tackles the themes of sexual and physical abuse, which, for some readers, may make this piece a particularly hard one to read.  

The title to this film could be so many things: women forgiving, women fighting, women growing, women shrinking, women believing, women doubting, women conserving, women demolishing. If you find yourself settling down to watch Sarah Polley’s masterful film, you’ll witness eight women from a Mennonite community in America do all of this, and infinitely more.  

Women Talking will be unlike any film you’ve seen before.  

In an eerily context-less setting, the women of an isolated religious community come to the traumatic realisation that they have been abused, violently and systemically, for many years. This abuse has been at the hands of the men in their radically patriarchal community: their fathers, their brothers, their uncles, their sons. Catching one of these men red-handed, the women realise that what they had long been manipulated into thinking was either their own irrational imaginations or ghostly/demonic encounters, was actually sexual abuse perpetrated by the men they had shared their entire existence with. The men they had raised. The men who had raised them.  

Based on the acclaimed novel by Miriam Toews and inspired by a harrowing true story, the Oscar-winning script offers us a front row seat to the falling apart of an entire reality as these women begin to unravel all that they know to be true.  

Do they stay and forgive the men? Do they stay and fight to the (literal) death? Or do they leave and make a new home for themselves in an outside world they know nothing of? This is the question that drives the narrative of the film as eight representatives from three different families are tasked with coming to a decision, this is the conundrum that has the women talking.  

'This film tackles a truly traumatic subject with the utmost care, it is as empathetic as it is empowering.'

With a sense of specific time and place that is only given one opportunity to interrupt the narrative (in the form of a call for the residents to be counted in the 2010 census), there is a distinct sense that this story is tragically universal in its nature. As countless critics have observed, this film tackles a truly traumatic subject with the utmost care, it is as empathetic as it is empowering. It does not minimise the atrocities that these women and girls have experienced, nor does it sensationalise them. Through the immensely talented ensemble cast, Director, Sarah Polley has curated a spectrum of raw and complex emotion - brutal honesty, righteous anger, utter despair and rebellious hope are weaved together to create a tapestry of reaction.  

The complexity and care with which this story is told is a gift to the women who inspired the film, and to the women who will watch it.  

Audiences watch as the powerful rage of Salome (played by The Crown’s Claire Foy) is countered by the defiant gentleness of Ona (Rooney Mara), while the loud terror of Mariche (Jessie Buckley) is quelled by the silent care of Melvin (a transgender character played by August Winter). And, all the while, not one reaction is judged. Every woman is given the right to her own natural response, and the right to have that response shift and stretch and adjust. The dignity and love that flows out of this conversation is somewhat of a masterclass in the beginnings of healing and the liberation that follows.    

And yet, the film has even more to offer its audiences, there’s yet another question that is written into the rock of Women Talking, one which was articulated by the director herself  -

‘What does it mean to be true to your faith? What does it mean to get rid of the structures that have sprung up around your faith, that are insidious and corrupting?’ 

It is utterly fascinating: the women are determined to rid themselves, one way or another, of the men who have hurt them so deeply, but they refuse to be separated from the God whose name has been manipulatively enacted in the process. Where we are so used to the entanglement of God and the people who wrongfully use him as a means to an awful end, these women seem to demonstrate quite the opposite. And what’s more striking is that they do so, not out of obligation or duty, but out of pure love and hope.  

When the women speak of earthly things, there is a heaviness to their voices. When they speak of God, their words feel light.  

We see them recite the Bible in moments of overwhelm, meditate on it in moments of decision-making, pray it in moments of panic, and refer to it in moments of relief. It is their faith that fuels their rebellion, it is their belief in God that informs their desire for more. A verse from the Bible is ultimately the catalyst for their decision to leave, as they choose to re-build their lives on ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable’. It seems that if the oppressors wanted these women to believe that they were inherently less than, they simply should not have introduced them to a God who tells them differently.  

One of the most powerful monologues comes from a bruised and bleeding Mariche towards the end of the film. She says,

‘We have decided that we want, that we are entitled to, three things… we want our children to be safe, we want to be steadfast in our faith, and we want to think’.

Her weighty words are responded to with tears and with a song. The sound of the women singing the words ‘nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee’ becomes the soundtrack to them packing up their lives as they leave familiarity in search of freedom, a freedom which is not intended to create distance between them and God, but to bring them nearer to each other.  

To watch faith flow from the wounded is humbling. To see the complexities between God and hurt play out in this film is captivating. It feels compellingly honest, and messy, and real

The Oscar win and the endless five star-reviews are sufficient evidence of the power of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. But deeper evidence may also be found in the profound catharsis felt by those viewers who, in varying contexts, are trying to disentangle their faith from their hurt, or perhaps the curiosity of those who are left wondering what kind of a faith would ever be worth such an endeavour.  

 

 

Review
Art
Care
Culture
Mental Health
5 min read

Mental health: the art that move us from ostracism to empathy

Four current London exhibitions show the move towards compassion.

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A painting of a haunted looking old man dressed in an imagined military uniform.
A Man Suffering from Delusion of Military Rank.
Théodore Géricault, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrayals of mental health were revolutionised from the nineteenth century onwards. While previous generations had focused on the ostracism of those suffering mental illness, and the fear their condition aroused in others, modern artists began to focus on the dignity and humanity of sufferers. Four current London exhibitions show this move towards compassion. 

On display at the Courtauld’s Goya to Impressionism, Theodore Gericault’s A Man Suffering from Delusion of Military Rank, c.1819 -22, shows the artist’s sensitive response to ‘monomania’, the term coined in the early 1800s for people living with a single delusional obsession. It is thought this painting is part of a series of portraits on fixations including A Child Snatcher, A Kleptomaniac, A Woman Addicted to Gambling and A Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, the face of the last rendered in an unsettling green tinge. 

The circumstances surrounding the painting of the series remain mysterious. The timing coincides with Romantic painter Gericault completing his most famous work, the monumental The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-19, depicting 15 survivors of a shipwreck, who had been adrift on a makeshift raft, originally containing 147 passengers, from the French frigate Meduse. Gericault’s preparation for the canvas included visiting morgues to check on the colour of decomposing flesh and building a model of the doomed raft. His difficulties in completing the huge work, over 23 feet long, and the possibility some of his close family may have suffered from mental illness, have supported the belief Gericault painted A Man Suffering from Delusion of Military Rank, and related portraits for personal reasons, possibly out of gratitude to the physician who cared for his family. But there is now doubt if Dr Etienne-Jean Georget commissioned the painting, and whether he was chief physician at Saltpetriere asylum in Paris. 

Even if a biographical motivation for the series falls down, and there is no way of knowing if the subjects of the portraits were individuals living with mental health conditions, these portraits remain unique in early nineteenth century painting. People deemed at the very margins of society are portrayed in the same manner as the most powerful, in half-length portraits emphasising their dignity and humanity, over their social estrangement and health challenges. 

The Raft of the Medusa, Louvre, Paris. 

A painting shows a wreck of a rafter holding survivors and corpses.

Van Gogh’s mutilation of his own ear is interwoven into his biography and his art. In The Ward in the Hospital at Arles and The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, both 1889, the artist depicted the interior and exterior of the institution where nuns cared for him, during his mental health crisis. The paintings’ significance to his recovery is shown by Van Gogh taking them with him when he moved to another psychiatric facility 25 kilometres away at Saint-Remy-de-Provence. 

Blue is the dominant colour of The Ward, permeating the walls, the beamed ceiling, the crucifix and the door underneath it, and several patients. wear dark blue clothing, including the two nursing Sisters at the centre of the scene, whose Order of St Augustine black and white habits, have been realised in darkest blue. Van Gogh described the long ward as ‘the room of those suffering from fever’, most probably referring to patients with mental illness. The painting was reworked during the artist’s admittance at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, with the symbolic empty chair used in other works to represent him and his housemate Paul Gauguin added to the foreground, together figures gathered around a stove. The return to the painting was prompted by reading Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, a fictionalised account of the author’s spell in a Siberian prison, and the book’s characters may have provided the inspiration for the huddled men. 

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles captures the grace of the hospital’s Renaissance building, by depicting the inner courtyard from the vantage point of the first-floor gallery. From this aerial angled viewpoint, the garden’s bright flora, radiating from a central pond, spreads out in all directions. Van Gogh’s description of the scene to his sister Willemien, hints at their Bible reading, clergy childhood: ‘It is therefore a painting full of flowers and springtime greenery. Three dark and sad tree trunks however run through it like snakes…’ 

Van Gogh’s images of healing were from memory rather than life, and document his own mental health recovery:  

‘I can assure you that a few days in hospital were very interesting and one perhaps learns how to live from the sick.’ 

The Ward, Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Van Gogh's painting of a mental ward in a hospital

Edvard Munch's Portraits, Evening 1888, shows the artist’s sister Laura, who had been hospitalised for mental illness, on and off, since adolescence. Although Laura is lost in her own world, staring fixedly ahead against a coastal landscape, the affection of the artist for the subject is palpable. Fashionably dressed in straw hat and summer dress, Laura’s dignity anchors the composition. Munch documented his own breakdown after alcohol poisoning in a portrait of Daniel Jacobson. His full-length portrayal of the doctor, arms akimbo, drew the reaction: ‘just look at the picture he has painted of me, it’s stark raving mad.’ Munch’s fascination with the doctor-patient relationship is evident in Lucien Dedichen and Jappe Nilssen, 1925-6, where Dedichen’s looming, purple presence, overshadows the diminutive, seated patient. 

Portrait, Evening. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

A painting of a  pensive young woman sitting and staring across a lawn.

Mental health and delusion form the wellspring of Grayson Perry’s Delusion’s of Grandeur. The artist responds to the Wallace’s flamboyant rococo collection in the persona of Shirley Smith, a character believing she is the rightful heir of the Wallace Collection. Eighteenth century style ceramics are decorated with outline figures resembling the Simpsons. Perry creates a family tree for Shirley from the Wallace’s miniatures, A Tree in the Landscape where every member has a condition from the American psychiatric guide Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 

Grayson Perry, Untitled Drawing, Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro. 

A image of a woman against a detailed red background.

In Alison Watt: From Light at Pitzhanger Manor, the artist’s still lifes of roses, fabrics and death masks responds to the collection of Regency architect Sir John Soane, and the ever-present fragility and complexity of human life and psychological flourishing. “With a rose it is impossible not to be aware of human intervention. Roses are bred, altered outside of nature and given names. In the history of painting the rose can be read as a symbol of beauty, innocence and transience, but also of decline and decay, echoing Soane’s preoccupation with themes of death and memorialisaton.” 

With the scientific and medical advances of the nineteenth century, life in all its psychological complexity, could supplant death as artists’ inexhaustible fount of inspiration. 

Le Ciel, Alison Watt.

A diseased rose.

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