This article contains discussions of sexual assault, rape and organized religion.
Faith is the supreme, paradoxical act of human imagination. On the fated intersections of gender, location, era and experience, faith saves from despair and leads to despair. Water (2005), directed by Deepa Mehta, and Women Talking (2022), directed by Sarah Polley, both explore how these diverging paths are not mutually exclusive.
Organized religion is represented as a vessel for violent social control in both films, reliant on conformity and fear of the unknown. Female characters reconcile their traumatic reality with their beliefs as they attempt to take back their lives — not away from God, but from a patriarchy that anoints itself with God’s authority. In Women Talking, theological conversations help the characters reach an understanding of the collective good, whereas religion must be contradicted by conscience in Water in pursuit of what is right. Neither film denounces religion, yet they demonstrate how faith in oneself enriches morality both within and beyond the constraints of organized faith systems.
Based on a novel by Miriam Towes, Women Talking follows women in a Mennonite colony who have discovered that the men have been drugging them with horse tranquillizers and assaulting them in their sleep. Two girls spot a rapist running away in the night, proving these terrorizing attacks were not the work of demons, as the men claimed. With several of the men arrested and the rest away in town to post bail, the women have two days to decide on their course of action: stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave before the men return. Much of the intergenerational conversation takes place in a barn, with narration by Autje (Kate Hallett), the youngest child present.
Polley’s script creates nuanced, lively characters, carefully incorporating dynamics between them to emphasize the pain and strength of their community. The actors tackle blocks and barbs of dialogue with equal naturalism, making the heightened reality of the extended conversation accessible.
Occasional moments of humour — bursts of laughter to prevent tears — add to the conversational realism as the women grapple with the implications of their decision on their future and that of the next generation. The characters express their trauma in realistic shades, from the serene Ona (Rooney Mara) to the gently witty Greta (Sheila McCarthy) and righteously furious Salome (Claire Foy), who wields a scythe in one of the opening scenes to attack the man who raped her four-year-old daughter.
Religion is the framework for their discussion. Fighting may be at odds with the women’s vows of pacifism, but staying would also be a violation if it may eventually lead to violence. Leaving has its own implications, requiring them to lie, which could also deprive them of salvation. Salome responds to this theory with an exceptional monologue that sucks the air out of the barn, challenging God to kill her if she has sinned by protecting her child.
As they discuss their shared and individual traumas, the women quote Bible passages and sing hymns to soothe one another. “They made us disbelieve ourselves,” says Mejal (Michelle McLeod), who has been experiencing panic attacks and began smoking after her assaults. But the men cannot take their religion from them. Avenues of thought are posited, considered and countered, often sharply, as practical questions bring out philosophical discussions. While Salome says she will become a murderer if she stays, Ona, who is heavily pregnant from rape, says that with time and distance, she could imagine forgiving the men. She suggests that, to some level, the men and boys are victims themselves of a reprehensible mentality perpetuated in the colony. This is not mentioned to exonerate the men, but is part of a larger discussion about what will happen to the women’s sons, depending on their decision.
In a film built on dialogue, Polley deploys her silences with much intention, from horrific flashes to longer sequences that confront the aftermath of abuse. “The silence was the horror,” Autje narrates, a deeply unsettling concept reflected in Water’s ambiguous conclusion.
While both films are fictional, Women Talking is based on a horrific string of sexual assaults in a Bolivian Mennonite colony. Water similarly imagines a fictional reality based on real experiences. Set in India in 1938, the film opens with the death of an eight-year-old child bride’s husband. After becoming a widow, Chuiya is sent by her father to live out the rest of her days in a decrepit, impoverished ashram in Varanasi for Hindu widows, in accordance with custom. To avoid becoming economic and emotional burdens to their families, widows are ostracised in these secluded shelters as bad omens, to the point that accidentally touching one is cause for a bath.
Played by the bubbly Sarala Kariyawasam, Chuiya is our way into a suffocatingly oppressive world, where women live sequestered from the rest of society with shaved heads and shrouded in white cloths. While Autje’s narration retells events, Chuiya is on the ground and has no qualms about questioning oppressive rules as she encounters them. A toothless, senile woman dreams of the deep-fried sweets from her wedding feast that widows are no longer allowed to eat, repeating the list like a prayer — plump white rasgullas, piping hot gulab jamun, yellow ladoos made of pure butter.
Regardless of rules, Chuyia steals a ladoo and sneaks it into the ashram for her. As the widow cradles the sweet in her hand, we see a startlingly affecting flashback of her wedding ceremony. She, too, was a child when she married, adorned in a red and gold sari and being fed a ladoo as she sat alongside her adult husband. The rich colours of the widow’s memory stand out from the cool tones that dominate the film, adding lush surrealism to her treasured promises of the past.
Polley also plays with surrealism to depict an external world of opportunity when a census taker arrives at the colony, blasting Daydream Believer by The Monkees from his car. The song is a disorienting shock amidst Hildur Guðnadóttir’s moving, classical score, but a needed reminder about the sheltered existence these women live. The stakes of their ultimate decision are raised a notch higher by the total unfamiliarity they would expose themselves to by leaving. While Women Talking depicts a surreally unknown future, Water washes the past with dreamy nostalgia.
There is little sense of community within Water’s ashram, largely due to its fierce leader, Madhumati (Manorami). She forces the beautiful and miserable young widow Kalyani (Lisa Ray) into prostituion, ferrying her across the sacred Ganges river every night to upper-class clients. Kalyani dares to hope for escape after falling in love with Narayan (John Abraham), a rich, idealistic university student and admirer of Gandhi who soon proposes marriage. Though Chuiya and Kalyani befriend each other, Chuiya’s relationship with Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) is the thematic crux of the film.
A middle-aged widow, Shakuntala, is plagued with bitter doubts about a doctrine she follows but cannot truly believe. She urges Chuiya to forget her past life but cannot bring herself to total resignation about her own fate, even questioning a pandit – a Hindu scholar – on what exactly Hindu scriptures say about the treatment of widows. Biswas subtly flits between anger and pain, transforming the briefest of pauses into moments of suffocating contemplation. Her performance is delicate and dignified as Shakuntala pushes herself to the point of trusting her conscience over the dictates of her religion without the support of anyone around her. Women talk in Water, but real dialogue is sparse. Still, Shakuntala emerges with rich interiority because we do not need words to see her self-empowerment; under Mehta’s direction, her inner conflict and resolution play clearly over her face.