I almost skipped this Best Picture nominee because of the rape theme. Then it won Best Adapted Screenplay. Besides, I had mostly liked Promising Young Woman, so maybe this would be similarly watchable. Now I might as well tell you up front: While there's no on-screen depiction or even audio of the crimes, it's not for the faint of heart.
Netflix's DVD jacket doesn't even adequately describe the first minute; the one-sentence summary on the Netflix webpage is better for that. The setting is in 2010, but you could be forgiven for initially thinking it's much earlier because of the low-color Mennonite community, called only "the colony." In its isolation, it has become worse than the Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale in some ways: All post-infancy girls and women have been repeatedly gas-sedated and awakened with telltale signs of rape. Men tell them it's the work of ghosts or demons, lies, or imagination run wild (even when pregnancy results?), until one man gets caught breaking in and then spills on several others, who all get arrested. Alas, most other men in the colony leave town to contribute to the bail, tho that mercifully keeps them away for a couple days. Most of the movie takes place in that interim as women consider three options: stay and try to forgive everyone, fight a revolution, or run off to start their own colony.
At first, I'd thought these premises the brainchild of some overzealous raging feminist. I later learned that they were inspired by terribly true events in late-2000s Bolivia. (The location of the fictitious colony is deliberately ambiguous.) Nobody bailed out the RL rapists, but neither did the rapes entirely discontinue afterward.
Anyway, the film almost constantly lives up to its title. That's not a complaint from me; under the circumstances, I'd prefer dialogue to action. Some underage girls hang around the debate room but don't chip in, rather impatient for a decision. If you're more mature, you won't be bored by the understandably tense discussion. Just about every factor worth contemplating comes up, except that nobody seems to entertain the idea that they might well lose a literal battle. Personally, I might have suggested leaving for the nonce, building up forces, and coming back to deal justice, but most of the women aren't interested in vengeance (which, after all, is the Lord's). There's a reason I didn't add a "revenge" tag. They do hope for further reproduction with the better men.
No two women are of quite the same mind. I won't go into all their personalities, just a few of the more prominent. The occasional narrator is Ona (Rooney Mara), pregnant at the time of the proceedings and of a very forgiving mindset, which needn't mean accepting the status quo. Only Scarface (Frances McDormand) is so pious and set in her ways that she recuses herself after fighting and leaving tie for the plurality of votes. Salome (Claire Foy) is in much more of a fighting mood, often lashing out at other women. Mariche (Jessie Buckley) has the added woe of a physically abusive husband.
To my surprise, nobody loses her faith altogether. They generally believe in the rightness of the gospel. The main tenet in question is whether leaving the colony would forfeit their ticket to heaven. (I'll note that not all Mennonite communities are this strict or old-fashioned.)
The only males we get to see much of are the good ones, especially August (Ben Whishaw), who takes the minutes because the women have been denied literacy lessons. The women are divided on whether to allow him to weigh in. Then there are the boys playing outside, who may yet be innocent. Watching over them and on the alert for news is Melvin (August Winter), a transman. Such a transition must be especially hard in a society like that, which may explain why Melvin is not one of the better-adjusted characters. Why wasn't she excommunicated, like August's mom was for questioning teachings?
Director Sarah Polley thinks the picture merits a theater viewing, partly for the sake of having someone laugh with you. As it is, I can't remember more than one moment that was supposed to be funny at all. Maybe you need a more gallows sense of humor than mine.
WT is easier to admire than it is to enjoy. I hesitate to recommend it to anyone I know. If you can get through the opening setup, you should be good to go for 104 minutes.
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