Warning: This is a work of female imagination. And it contains spoilers for The Banshees of Inisherin and Women Talking.
We’ve reached the point this Oscar season when people have put away the popcorn and pulled out their knives. Just as the Christmas gifts have been unwrapped and the holidays are over, all of the prospective Oscar hopefuls have been seen, which means Film Twitter starts to get a bit ruthless. Gone are the bright and hopeful days of September, after Telluride and TIFF, when anything was possible; now it’s time to start killing your darlings.
And if there’s any darling that has Twitter sharpening its claws, it’s Women Talking.
Now that it’s in limited release, the negative chatter has been ticking upward, with some people describing it as a “gabfest” and “boring,” and the biggest quibble being the inability to believe that illiterate women in a Mennonite colony would be able to speak so eloquently on the subject of sexual assault. (Fair enough on that last one, but Sarah Polley’s film does start with the title card: “This is a work of female imagination.” Plus, no one ever bitches when Nazis speak English with a German accent instead of straight-up German in a film about World War II.)
Granted, everyone is entitled to their opinion and if you don’t like films like 12 Angry Men, the Sidney Lumet classic set in one room that was nominated for three Academy Awards, then Women Talking is probably not for you.
But what I’ve grown to discover from scrolling through Twitter is that unsurprisingly the demographic that most likes to hate-talk on Women Talking is men, but that the film that these men on Film Twitter rally around the most is the heartbreaking and lovely The Banshees of Inisherin, which is essentially. . .Men Talking.
Like Women Talking, Banshees is set in a remote area where an argument is the crux of the story. It also could most definitely be a play if it weren’t a film (the walking shots and breathtaking setting make it a bit more cinematic, but like Women Talking, Banshees essentially has just a few scene locations). However, I’ve never heard anyone refer to Banshees as a “gabfest,” even if the film spends two hours following around two men who endlessly argue about why they’re not friends anymore (clearly, the film is about much more than this, but this is essentially the plot). Can you imagine if that was the plot of a film with two female leads instead of male? “Gabfest” would be the least of the sexist terms thrown around.
If the hump of “illiterate women talking” isn’t enough of a struggle to get over, in Banshees, we’re asked to suspend our disbelief that Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who ends his friendship with Pádraic (Colin Farrell) so he can concentrate on his violin, would threaten to cut off all his fingers if Pádraic ever says a word to him again—and THEN cuts off all his fingers, making it hard for him to do the very thing he set out to do when he ended his friendship with Pádraic in the first place! It makes no sense. It’s as sensical as one of the stories Kramer sold to Peterman on Seinfeld (like when he fell in the mud and ruined his pants. . .the very pants he was on his way to return!),
But of course, that’s what we love about Banshees. This complicated character doesn’t make sense with his actions; his pride is greater than his art and forces him to destroy his ability to enjoy his craft. That incomprehension is what drives the story. We don’t even think about the real-life complications of gangrene!
If you look closely at Women Talking and Banshees, women in both take action and leave toxic situations. While Colm and Pádraic bicker back and forth, Siobhán (Kerry Condon) decides that life on Inisherin isn’t working for her and leaves to make a better one for herself as a librarian on the mainland. Just as Siobhán in her yellow coat waves to Pádraic from the boat, in Women Talking, it’s an equally powerful moment when the women peace-out on their horses and carriages. We, as an audience, don’t know where the Mennonite women are going or even if it will work out (most likely, some will probably return home), but it’s the sense of agency the women take hold of that counts, because for the first time in their lives, they are granted with a choice, and their children—and their children’s children—will remember this. Siobhán doesn’t have a deadline (that we know of) hanging over her head like the women of Women Talking, but her departure from Inisherin might be something that saves her life, especially considering how miserable everyone is on the island. Even after Siobhán romantically rejects Dominic (Barry Keoghan), he takes his own life. “Kill ourselves” is never among the three options for the Mennonite women (“Stay and forgive,” “Stay and fight,” “Leave”).
And maybe that’s the main takeaway from both films, the way men and women react to conflict. The women take action, and the men toil and torture themselves (when the conflict is often self-inflicted to begin with). Seeing Women Talking and Banshees together would make for a good double feature, but as we’ve learned with the latter, there’s no need to try to argue with men sometimes. They could lose a finger or two.
