‘They speak’ is the testimony of a rotten society that in five years has taken four steps backwards for each step forward. It is a basic re-education film shot for an audience that, from its title, is not going to go see it using as an excuse words that mean nothing in an increasingly conservative world. Sarah Polley preaches to the converted, talks about the most basic human rights and despite everything is forced to put some additions so as not to anger those people whose opinion is already signed before starting to see it. Its existence is as completely understandable… as it is terribly sad.
to the barn
Polley’s film has the air of a play, but with the intention of reaching the widest possible audience to disseminate the key points of a message that anyone would agree with years ago, but that the cultural regression (despite whoever it may be) makes it sadly necessary to emphasize. As obvious as it may seem, yes, rape is wrong, women have rights and their own choice. Brandishing these claims seems increasingly subversive. in the days when seeing a woman on a billboard is already reviled as “woke”.
Although it is directed at them, those who carry the “anti-wokismo” banner had no thought of approaching ‘Ellas hablan’. How, if the title and the poster make it clear what it is? And so we come to the basic problem of the tape: its audience is going to attend a basic re-education with which he will inherently agree, but which will fall on deaf ears, like teaching a mathematician to add. Personally, the same thing happened to me as watching ‘En los márgenes’, the film by Juan Diego Botto: yes, I agree with what you say, but your message is not hitting the target with me.
It is still interesting that a film, deep down, as simple in its approach as ‘They Talk’ is nominated for best film at the Oscars alongside wonders full of layers and complexity in its female protagonists as ‘Tár’ or, in its own way, ‘Everything, at once, everywhere’. Perfect movies with imperfect characters, something that the current that exploded in the past decade was leading us to. It saddens me that this is the only film directed by a woman that has slipped into the ten nominees of the year (leaving aside things like ‘To Leslie’, ‘Aftersun’ or ‘The eternal daughter’), because it’s exactly what people who don’t watch movies directed by women think they’re missing.
passion for christ
But not everything is the message, luckily, but how it is expressed. And here Sarah Polley manages to puff out her chest with a precise direction that turns theatricality into cinematography and some characters that show the different layers of reaction towards an abuse like the one shown: from the one who thinks that everything should stay the same because there is no point in resisting to the one who chooses to cut heads, going through the calmest ones, who think that it is better to leave without a trace. All of them have a powerful argument, are well raised and they turn what could be a sterile debate into one more akin to ‘Twelve Angry Men’. ‘Eight merciless women’? It’s not a bad definition.
Before so many rape and revenge as we are used to seeing, ‘They speak’ proposes a monkfish and consequences in which the women of a small Mennonite colony must face a problem that inevitably links them to the 21st century, despite being cut off from any hint of modernity in the middle of 2010. In just two days, the women in this film learn to make themselves heard, they discover that they have their own opinion and that this is modifiable over time. They start out as extras in their own lives, but end up becoming the protagonists. And it is exciting and empowering to see how the chains are broken in the face of the greatest injustice they have experienced.
The footage begins with hundreds of women discovering democracy and ends with hundreds of women assuming it after going through a fabulous script that, instead of repetitively influencing the same problems and solutions, it always has a new look, an unexpected twist, an inescapable fork. The only thing they are sure of is that they, illiterate women who have only lived the life they know, need a change. Along the way there will be discussions about family, tradition, redemptive and cathartic laughter and faith. always with the masculine look on women who believe they are sheepish as a backdrop. As I tell you, they are very well launched and interwoven ideas, but it is a shame that they are so necessary in the political climate of 2023.
Keep politics out of my movies
There will be few who complain that “this movie has too much politics”as if ‘The birth of a nation’, ‘Intolerance’ or the very saga of ‘Indiana Jones’ were just apolitical entertainment. Cinema has been a way of crossing the barriers of knowledge since its inception and of considering our convictions. Yes, ‘They Speak’ is deeply political, but so are ‘Tár’, ‘Top Gun Maverick’, ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’, ‘The Triangle of Sadness’ and ‘All Quiet Front’, without that they get some scolding. Politics is part of life and also of cinema, and to deny it is to deny a basic facet of the human being.
In his eagerness to make himself understood, ‘They speak’ even pronounces the dreaded phrase “Not all men”, as if wanting to please a sector of the public that it will hardly arrive to see it in its context. It is an interesting film, well shot, fabulously acted and with a powerful script, but in his mere existence he has his penance. In a world that increasingly rejects nuances, this film asks if it is possible to forgive your rapist, if forced forgiveness is really forgiveness or if it can be confused with permission. These are tough, necessary questions that not so long ago we could have answered without hesitation. In 2023, they would cause a bitter debate on Twitter.
Sarah Polley’s tape has the same problem as someone who wants to talk to someone who clearly has no interest in changing their mind: its staging is convincing, its script has fabulous phrases, its argumentation is powerful and its cast is incredible, but, beyond the curious who do it for their Oscar nomination (who seeing the box office in Spain, they are not many), his speech will reach the same people who already wielded it. In times without nuances, it’s sad that ‘Ellas habla’ is so necessary.