Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022) opens with a phrase that can be interpreted as both a disclaimer and a thesis statement: that the film is “an act of female imagination.” The viewer is being primed to bear witness to an extraordinary deliberation.
At the outset of the film, the women of an unnamed religious colony discover that they have been drugged, raped, and brutalized in their sleep by the men who, for generations, have held the keys to their lives. Authorities intervene and arrest the accused men for their own protection, while the rest of the men depart temporarily to secure the release of their co-conspirators. The women stay and vote, in a collective attempt to decide what to do next: to forgive the men, to stay and fight for their home, or to leave. A stalemate emerges, so representatives from three families — from teenagers to grandmothers — are selected to decide which course to take.
It is clear from the outset that the rules governing these decisions are novel and improvised. Neither precedent nor procedure dictate the course of the discussion. This group must work from first principles and ultimately arrive at a choice that satisfies their competing impulses. They have been kept illiterate and have limited tools at their disposal. Some argue that their faith requires them to forgive, lest they surrender their places in heaven. Others want vengeance, eager to prime themselves for an attack. The possibility of life beyond the colony is mysterious and unknown. The group eschews modern technology, and the women are completely ignorant of the scale of the larger world. It is an impossible situation with no obvious resolution in sight.
The electricity in the air of the barn housing this makeshift congress resembles the potent energy of a cinematic courtroom. Sidney Lumet’s genre-defining 12 Angry Men (1957) set the standards for legal decision-making on screen. The overwhelming majority of the film takes place behind a closed door, where 12 New York men have been summoned to adjudicate a case.
But where the women in Polley’s film must innovate, the men in Lumet’s film are instead tasked with implementing a system that has been handed to them wholecloth. The parameters of their judgment have been established by rules, precedent, and centuries of tradition. They are fulfilling a heavy civic duty, but one that affects them only indirectly. Their deliberations are isolated from the consequences that will follow.
In contrast, Polley’s women are the subjects of their own decision-making. Lumet’s jury must live with the decision they make, but the women of the colony must also live with the direct consequences of their process. The ramifications of each option are unknowable and will shape the lives of these women and their families for generations to come. When watching 12 Angry Men, the life-or-death stakes seem as high as they could possibly be. In Women Talking, the community is grappling with whether it is possible to go on living after enduring their collective trauma.
These differences are underscored by the settings of the two films. While the sun in 12 Angry Men is a source of heat and frustration, in Polley’s film, it brings light into the room while also marking time. They need to make their decision before the men return and their decision is, in effect, made for them. Children enter and exit the scene, a constant reminder of the stakes at hand. These women don’t have the privilege of detachment imposed on the typical American jury, cloistered in a purpose-built room and separated from their attachments. Forgive, fight, or leave: whatever choice the women make will be a shock to their entire way of life. Lumet’s jurors have their consciences at stake. The women of the colony must also consider their safety, their childrens’ safety, and their ability to survive in a potentially hostile world they know nothing about.
The women in Polley’s film are not anonymous to either the viewer or each other. They have been in community with one another for generations. When they speak each others’ names, their voices are layered with understanding. Contrast this with 12 Angry Men, where the jurors are numbered and arrive on screen without background or experience. Are they husbands? Fathers? Have they ever known violence first-hand? Lacked for money? These men are constantly testing one another’s experience, patience, and values. They can’t do better than approximate their peers. For much of the film’s runtime, these men are jockeying for position. Integrity, Justice, Expediency, Prejudice: each of these is campaigned for in turn. That’s not to say that the members of the womens’ congress don’t have agendas to lobby for. Arguably, the gap between Claire Foy’s Salome and Jessie Buckley’s Mariche is so large that it seems impossible to bridge, but their common experiences and shared values enable them to process each others’ emotions and recognize the need to arrive at an authentic decision together.
That is not to say that Lumet is ignorant of the limitations of the legal system it depicts. In fact, his depiction of the legal system is rife with unspoken critique. While 12 Angry Men ends in a just acquittal, it also shows how tenuous this outcome is. The entire process is nearly derailed by a hot summer’s day and a broken ceiling fan. It is too easy to see the alternate timeline where Henry Fonda’s Juror #8 suffers from heatstroke and is replaced by an uncaring alternate, eager to vote guilty and vote fast. It would certainly make a shorter and less interesting film, but real-life justice doesn’t need a compelling narrative to keep the wheels turning. A jury doesn’t have to explain how or why it reaches its decision. The potential for something to go wrong in this black box is ever-present. Innocent defendants have been sent to prison or even killed based on convictions never reasoned in writing.
The absence of a record makes errors difficult to detect and correct. This is why the improvised forum of Women Talking place such a priority on preserving their proceedings. The record dutifully kept by Ben Whishaw’s August Epp – perhaps the only person with the cultural competence and technical skill needed to put these womens’ deliberations to paper – is created as evidence of what happened before, what’s happening next, and why that decision has been reached. By creating a witness and a transcript, these women have authored a story that cannot be denied, unless one chooses to look the other way and ignore it.
Taken together, 12 Angry Men and Women Talking are a testament to the value of working through a problem together, thoroughly, and dutifully, even if the outcomes of the deliberations are unknowable. In both films, consensus is paramount and a just verdict is reached. The immediate consequences are shown, but the viewer is left to imagine the ultimate fates of the various players. The sun sets. The jurors disperse on the courthouse steps, going home to dinner and a much-needed rest. The women, on the other hand, ride together, the weight of their decisions borne by each other and the beasts of burden that carry them toward the horizon. One group will wake up in familiar, comfortable surroundings the next morning, forever changed by their experiences. For the other group, their trial is just beginning.
