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Post by finniussnrub on Dec 31, 2022 14:25:39 GMT
Far less Women Talking in a barn than I might've expected from some reactions, thought it was going to be closer to Conspiracy or 12 Angry Men in that regard, but it is far from those films, particularly because those are good films. This film would rather frequently cut away for random asides that don't add to much (other than give some extremely labored monologues) however they do derail what little momentum the film has to begin with in the main conversation. The main conversation itself though feels more repetitive as everyone seems to articulate the same point again and again, without much variation or genuine insight. It seems like everyone's mind is made up once the film starts, so there seems very little progress throughout the conversation. Polley's direction does not help things with her strange choice to make the film hard to look at with its color grading, the overuse of score that felt tonally out of sync more often than not and her refusal to ever stay on a performer acting for more than few a seconds. It doesn't help that I really didn't find this to be a terribly impressive ensemble. I could easily identify Jessie Buckley as the one performance in the film worthy of a nomination. Most of the performers however I found aggressively theatrical and mannered, with some line readings that defy logic with how far they seem from genuine human emotion. Ben Whishaw I think might give his career worst (and I usually like him), when he started blinky and talking in his first scene I thought he was playing his character with some mental disability, but no, that was apparently his choice to make this person seem "real" I guess.
This isn't me trying to make a "hot take" here, I was looking forward to seeing this film, but watching it I was rather genuinely baffled that anyone would think this was a great film, well directed, or consistently acted.
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Post by quetee on Dec 31, 2022 20:19:19 GMT
Well...sounds like it a give this film a pass due to subject matter situation.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2023 0:33:27 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2023 2:22:24 GMT
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forksforest
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Quit your shit-spitting
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Post by forksforest on Jan 22, 2023 0:40:24 GMT
It had such potential - incredible cast, shocking/moving story, picturesque setting etc. Had the source material been a play, i think it would have made for a better movie (or if it was adapted in that way), but it was much too "poetic" and insubstantial for such an important story. Really unfortunate because I agree, something along the likes of 12 Angry Men would have been perfect, but instead it meanders and wastes the potential of Foy, Buckley, Mara etc. Truly the plot could've wrapped up in a half hour tops lol, it's not like the conversations revealed anything new after the first couple discussions. The random shots of the kids, prairies? Not a fan of Polley's direction here.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jan 25, 2023 3:10:20 GMT
So early on in this movie, Claire Foy gives a passionate speech where she says “we have not imagined these attacks,” and stating her stance on the vote. During this speech, which begins as a medium shot, the camera gradually zooms in until the end of her speech, where it’s now become a close up. You can practically read the caption For Your Consideration while she speaks….
So I didn’t hate this movie, in fact I actually appreciate a lot of the things it did, but it just didn’t grab me. The script makes use of interesting themes and ideas, but that’s all there is: it’s just themes and ideas. The characters feel strangely limp, leading to a lot of heavy lifting on the part of the actors, and while the talent is there, the chemistry isn’t.
Honestly, I didn’t mind the color grading. actually, I thought it served to give the film some personality, especially as it looks to slowly bring some color in. The problem is that it’s in service of raw thinking, but little substance to complement it. Not that Polley doesn’t have some flashes of brilliance, specifically the “Nearer my God to Thee” segment that is more compelling than anything in the rest of the film. It just isn’t enough to make this a great film, and even She Said, despite its own preachy substance, was more reined in and fleshed out than this. (EDIT: Yeah, I’m gonna say it. She Said would have been a better Adapted Screenplay nomination.)
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Post by countjohn on Jan 25, 2023 5:09:35 GMT
This was not good. The biggest problem is that all the characters are so flat, despite a stacked cast who are all doing their best. We've got the sweet one, the angry one, exc and it just never gets beyond that in the script. And as some of you probably guessed they have the same conversations over and over again. At one point someone says that no one had named any reasons to not leave when someone said why she didn't want to leave 15 minutes earlier or so. I was keeping better track of what was going on and I wasn't even in the movie. So much of the dialogue is just way too on the nose and meta, like it's clearly trying to do a callback to some other issue.
Some of this just stretches plausibility too. I have no idea why they decided to reveal that it was set in 2010. I thought it was pre WWII for like the entire first 40 minutes which would have made sense. The Monkees song playing (yes, really) is one of the most WTF scenes of the year compounded by it playing again over the end credits (yes, really). The real thing happened in the middle of nowhere in Latin America which is more believable for them to be able to get away with something like that, and even then the ultimate resolution was that the police found out and shut it down with a bunch of men going to jail for rape. And the women were getting secretly drugged with horse tranquilizer and waking up with mysterious injuries. They didn't actually remember what happened so it wasn't a "gaslighting" issue like the movie made it out to be. Reading about the real events on wiki and it sounds like a better movie than what we got.
Someone on Letterboxd also pointed out that the characters are way too articulate for people who are supposed to be illiterate. Why is Mara doing all this philosophical noodling? And it's not like the illiteracy was a footnote, it's mentioned over and over again and that's the whole point of the August character. I didn't notice that specifically when I watched it but I think it's why so much of it rang false.
The color grading was cool, though.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Feb 8, 2023 7:21:30 GMT
Man, this was a slog. When a film feels stagey, it’s not always a movie-ruining thing, but here it just feels so artificial, stilted, and “written” on top of being dramatically inert. The whole thing is tediously protracted, with every major character representing a “type” instead of coming across like a real person. Everyone speaks in turn, waiting for the other person to finish before speaking, and then immediately responds without pause, and it all feels extremely unnatural. And yeah, the very refined, everyone-speaks-in-complete-thoughts-with-suspiciously-good-grammar dialogue completely took me out of it knowing that these people are supposed to be illiterate and uneducated (listening to Mara’s philosophical ruminations was like watching her reprise her role in Malick’s Song to Song). The critical reception to this movie is mystifying to me...
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Post by stephen on Feb 23, 2023 23:40:53 GMT
Yeah, all the ruckus surrounding the color grading was vastly overblown. It looked perfectly fine in practice. Nothing nomination-worthy, but nothing disastrous.
As a film it's perfectly fine. It does verge into the realm of stagey-ness at times (which is unavoidable considering it's largely set in one location). The writing is pretty deft although there are a few clunky lines when some of the characters decide to launch into screeds or tirades. Still, for the most part I found it pretty well-made.
A cast ranking:
1. Judith Ivey 2. Rooney Mara 3. Jessie Buckley 4. Liv McNeil (the scene where they talk to their brother about the pregnancy is one of the most harrowing of the year) 5. Sheila McCarthy 6. Ben Whishaw 7. Michelle McLeod 8. Claire Foy
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Feb 24, 2023 0:11:53 GMT
Guess I forgot to post this here. Oh well.
Love, love, love Sarah Polley and happy to see her back in the game, but I unfortunately feel this is probably her weakest work as a filmmaker. Not that it's bad, it's still a solid film, buoyed by some sharply written scenes and a uniformly terrific cast (Foy my MVP), but the whole does not equate to the sum of its parts.
The arguments to be considered are incredibly worthwhile and well-articulated; it's just too bad the talking points keep being had at the expense of any greater bits of character or enriching of this world. It became hard at a certain point to suspend disbelief that these women work on this land, raise their children, or are even illiterate when they feel constructed solely to speak eloquently on the consequences of their choices that were made abundantly clear since - what, minute three?
Unfortunately the only character given much development as a human being is Ben Wishaw as "Not All Men" (the film literally cuts to him as a character says that, what a choice). If I were being extraordinarily generous, I would say his development serves as a contrast to the women insofar as by the very nature of his sex he is granted some individualism that is denied them by the community, but that would be me saying the movie all about women having a voice only granting three-dimensionality to the man is good actually.
And yeah, I was not on board with the color grading in this movie. Idk if the film couldn't budget for the lighting to make it in black and white, or if Polley fell in love with the log footage and decided the only grading necessary was to crush the blacks, but it looks pretty damn bad. What really sucks about the grading is it obscures what are otherwise well-composed shots and nice bits of visual direction.
So it's a mixed-positive for me. Glad Polley is back and hope this stretch of her legs can yield us some better work moving forward. I do feel even though I didn't respond great to this that awards bodies probably should've, and I can't help but feel like the title (I know it's the novel's title but holy hell does it sound like a 30 Rock parody) and ugly visuals put people off from really seeking it out.
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Post by countjohn on Feb 24, 2023 23:29:56 GMT
Unfortunately the only character given much development as a human being is Ben Wishaw as "Not All Men" (the film literally cuts to him as a character says that, what a choice). If I were being extraordinarily generous, I would say his development serves as a contrast to the women insofar as by the very nature of his sex he is granted some individualism that is denied them by the community, but that would be me saying the movie all about women having a voice only granting three-dimensionality to the man is good actually. This is the logical outgrowth of the intersectional feminist mindset, women aren't individuals, they're just lumped together into faceless blobs depending on what demographic boxes they check. I'm always hearing people talk about what "women" think or want. That's a few billion people they're deciding to speak on behalf of, maybe just be an individual and speak for yourself.
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 25, 2023 5:44:29 GMT
I like it better than I thought I would. The pretense is ludicrous (set in 2010 ... why?) and some of the "talking" is quite tedious and wears its sermon on the sleeve, but it's also got some strong, emotional moments (for example the ending) and some really haunting, beautiful shots (the sepia tone doesn't bother me). The biggest strength of this film is definitely Hildur's score. It's amongst the year's best and was criminally snubbed.
With the exception of Rooney Mara (who's really, really wooden and dull) and Jessie Buckley (I find her aggravating and shrill), the cast is quite strong, with the MVPs being Foy, Ivey and Wishaw.
Overall I would rank it within the upper half amongst the this year's BP nominees and I would have no problem with Polley winning adapted screenplay.
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Post by mhynson27 on Feb 25, 2023 6:05:18 GMT
I like it better than I thought I would. The pretense is ludicrous (set in 2010 ... why?) and some of the "talking" is quite tedious and wears its sermon on the sleeve, but it's also got some strong, emotional moments (for example the ending) and some really haunting, beautiful shots (the sepia tone doesn't bother me). The biggest strength of this film is definitely Hildur's score. It's amongst the year's best and was criminally snubbed. With the exception of Rooney Mara (who's really, really wooden and dull) and Jessie Buckley (I find her aggravating and shrill), the rest of the cast are quite strong, with the MVPs being Foy, Ivey and Wishaw. Overall I would rank it within the upper half amongst the this year's BP nominees and I would have no problem with Polley winning adapted screenplay. I mean... the actual events took place between 2005-2009.
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 25, 2023 7:34:24 GMT
I like it better than I thought I would. The pretense is ludicrous (set in 2010 ... why?) and some of the "talking" is quite tedious and wears its sermon on the sleeve, but it's also got some strong, emotional moments (for example the ending) and some really haunting, beautiful shots (the sepia tone doesn't bother me). The biggest strength of this film is definitely Hildur's score. It's amongst the year's best and was criminally snubbed. With the exception of Rooney Mara (who's really, really wooden and dull) and Jessie Buckley (I find her aggravating and shrill), the rest of the cast are quite strong, with the MVPs being Foy, Ivey and Wishaw. Overall I would rank it within the upper half amongst the this year's BP nominees and I would have no problem with Polley winning adapted screenplay. I mean... the actual events took place between 2005-2009. I think Sarah Polley really doubled down to make it seem like it was in 1850 or something.
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Post by mhynson27 on Feb 25, 2023 13:10:02 GMT
I mean... the actual events took place between 2005-2009. I think Sarah Polley really doubled down to make it seem like it was in 1850 or something. Sorry to break it to you, but that's how these types of colonies feel. It's kind of the whole point.
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Post by JangoB on Feb 25, 2023 20:54:16 GMT
The movie feels like homework. And it's strangely cold. The performances are solid. The color grading looks good although it probably contributes to the distant feeling of the film. The color grading controversy is one of the most ridiculous things of 2022.
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Feb 26, 2023 5:56:31 GMT
Unfortunately the only character given much development as a human being is Ben Wishaw as "Not All Men" (the film literally cuts to him as a character says that, what a choice). If I were being extraordinarily generous, I would say his development serves as a contrast to the women insofar as by the very nature of his sex he is granted some individualism that is denied them by the community, but that would be me saying the movie all about women having a voice only granting three-dimensionality to the man is good actually. This is the logical outgrowth of the intersectional feminist mindset, women aren't individuals, they're just lumped together into faceless blobs depending on what demographic boxes they check. I'm always hearing people talk about what "women" think or want. That's a few billion people they're deciding to speak on behalf of, maybe just be an individual and speak for yourself. Idk what you're getting at here. All the women in Women Talking are white women so there's no additional demographic boxes for them to check - the only unique demographic beyond men and women is the lone trans male character who gets maybe 2 minutes of screentime and is there just to be traumatized and deadnamed until the "sweet" moment he's acknowledged respectfully, not exactly intersectional feminist propaganda. Are you saying this film is lumping all the characters together under the demographic of "women" and claiming to speak for all women?
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Post by countjohn on Feb 26, 2023 6:01:44 GMT
This is the logical outgrowth of the intersectional feminist mindset, women aren't individuals, they're just lumped together into faceless blobs depending on what demographic boxes they check. I'm always hearing people talk about what "women" think or want. That's a few billion people they're deciding to speak on behalf of, maybe just be an individual and speak for yourself. Idk what you're getting at here. All the women in Women Talking are white women so there's no additional demographic boxes for them to check - the only unique demographic beyond men and women is the lone trans male character who gets maybe 2 minutes of screentime and is there just to be traumatized and deadnamed until the "sweet" moment he's acknowledged respectfully, not exactly intersectional feminist propaganda. Are you saying this film is lumping all the characters together under the demographic of "women" and claiming to speak for all women? I'm just saying that that is the mindset the film was made under so all the women get lumped together as non distinct characters and the only one who seems like an individual is a man. Which is unintentionally dehumanizing to women if you think about it. The criticism that the characters all just say the same things and don't feel differentiated from each other has been made by many people and I was giving an ideological explanation as to why that might be.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Feb 28, 2023 5:28:51 GMT
color me pleasantly surprised that the weird color grading and at times aggressively didactic dialogue didn't prevent me from liking this. The first impression is really rough between the visual style and the artificiality of the discussion. It's mannered, at times too theatrical (like in Foy's performance which is almost entirely one-dimensional and comes out the gate swinging), and at its worst even clinical like when they're discussing technicalities and meanings of words. Those moments undersell the urgency of the situation and the film shines best when it takes time to explore the women's pain and how they've processed it differently. As the film progressed, my initial reservations about the structure and dialogue slipped away and I became more invested in their stories, and Polly engenders a palpable sense of freedom and power in their collective resolve that propels toward the film's stirring conclusion.
I was also worried Whishaw's presence would be a not-all-men box tick but the script does enough to justify his character as more than just an ally with his own experiences and longings and it's a really moving characterization. I think Whishaw's performance is mostly strong but falters in the most emotional scenes when it should be strongest. I'm not crazy about Foy either but the cast is otherwise very strong, with MVPs being Buckley and Ivey. The music is really lovely too.
Not a great film but a very good one with its qualities overpowering its flaws. I hope we don't have to wait 10 more years for another Polley film because her style is all over this thing and I need more of it.
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Post by michael128 on Mar 2, 2023 21:02:56 GMT
The Monkees song playing (yes, really) Could you explain this sentence to me please? I haven’t seen the movie, but nothing I’ve heard about it so far would result in me not believing there’s a Monkees song in it so why the “(yes, really)”?
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 2, 2023 21:35:50 GMT
The Monkees song playing (yes, really) is one of the most WTF scenes of the year compounded by it playing again over the end credits (yes, really). I loathed this movie - so I won't repeat myself on that...........but the use of this song was a huge mistake imo that people have let Polley off the hook for wrongly ..............in the book it's California Dreamin' but I guess she couldn't get the rights - or she got a recommendation - I heard her say in a TV interview to switch it to Daydream Believer - which is not the same in what it suggests or says as a song anyway even outside the scene: California Dreamin' is an ominous, mysterious song set in the now - it is simultaneously foreboding and comforting (mentions church, preacher, pretending to pray) - Daydream Believer is a merely a love song about a marriage collapsing and looking back on its origins - it's sweet and mostly in the past.........I think she thought it was patriarchal (or condescending?) and ironic to use but it really is not......... California Dreamin' (with female voices btw) would be - Daydream Believer is just an inappropriate song choice........
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Post by countjohn on Mar 3, 2023 5:14:18 GMT
The Monkees song playing (yes, really) Could you explain this sentence to me please? I haven’t seen the movie, but nothing I’ve heard about it so far would result in me not believing there’s a Monkees song in it so why the “(yes, really)”? It's just completely out of place with the mood of the movie and even the particular moment when it plays. And then choosing to emphasize it even more by playing it over the end credits, it's just one of those things where it made me go "why?". It came off like one of those "inappropriate soundtrack" joke Youtube videos. California Dreaming would have at least made sense lyrically as pacinoyes alluded to but even then I still think the music would be wildly out of place.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 5, 2023 20:13:41 GMT
back when I was predicting this to be the frontrunner for what I assumed would be its social relevance, I definitely misjudged how religious it would be. I mean yes there's a few surface elements you can understand muting the praise, the didactic screenplay, the occasional cringey grand pronouncements ("not all men" - really?), the color grade, but beyond all of that it's kind of a socially uncool movie. The laser focus on religion and faith makes it something you can't really imagine young feminists passionately rallying behind because the characters' faith is intrinsically linked with how they process these experiences of sexual violence and it's full of uncool words like "forgiveness" and "God" and "faith" etc, and practically all of these women leave this community with their faith intact. It's more a movie for Christian feminists than anyone else and it's about how to exist as a woman in a god-fearing community. Hardly the chest-beating, bra-burning expression of female pain and rage that it might've been (although Foy is definitely giving some of that, and it doesn't really work IMO). It's a far cry from Promising Young Woman which is much more palatable to PO'd elite progressive feminists.
And I like Women Talking a lot (and tbh the religious specifity makes it even more moving to me because I recognize some of these talking points from my youth), but it's much more niche than I was expecting and probably too Christian for Hollywood. The muted response makes more sense if you read it that way.
Also the performances missing makes sense too. It's a true ensemble film in that each of these women has a brief moment to shine but you can't really differentiate anyone as "better" than anyone else. I loved that Buckley scene towards the end but I also loved when Judith Ivey tells everyone to shut their pie-holes... Which one is better? Beats me, because none of these roles is more significant in the story than the other and for each one I was left wanting more so comparing them is hair-splitting at best.
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Post by Brother Fease on Jun 6, 2023 1:34:15 GMT
This was not good. The biggest problem is that all the characters are so flat, despite a stacked cast who are all doing their best. We've got the sweet one, the angry one, exc and it just never gets beyond that in the script. And as some of you probably guessed they have the same conversations over and over again. At one point someone says that no one had named any reasons to not leave when someone said why she didn't want to leave 15 minutes earlier or so. I was keeping better track of what was going on and I wasn't even in the movie. So much of the dialogue is just way too on the nose and meta, like it's clearly trying to do a callback to some other issue. Some of this just stretches plausibility too. I have no idea why they decided to reveal that it was set in 2010. I thought it was pre WWII for like the entire first 40 minutes which would have made sense. The Monkees song playing (yes, really) is one of the most WTF scenes of the year compounded by it playing again over the end credits (yes, really). The real thing happened in the middle of nowhere in Latin America which is more believable for them to be able to get away with something like that, and even then the ultimate resolution was that the police found out and shut it down with a bunch of men going to jail for rape. And the women were getting secretly drugged with horse tranquilizer and waking up with mysterious injuries. They didn't actually remember what happened so it wasn't a "gaslighting" issue like the movie made it out to be. Reading about the real events on wiki and it sounds like a better movie than what we got. Someone on Letterboxd also pointed out that the characters are way too articulate for people who are supposed to be illiterate. Why is Mara doing all this philosophical noodling? And it's not like the illiteracy was a footnote, it's mentioned over and over again and that's the whole point of the August character. I didn't notice that specifically when I watched it but I think it's why so much of it rang false. The color grading was cool, though. Not a fan of this movie one bit. I agree with the bold.
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Post by cheesecake on Jun 7, 2023 1:45:42 GMT
One of my most apprehensive viewings, and while it was a hard one, I found this to be a very powerful experience. Very interesting direction choices throughout, from the color grading to the song choices. Felt like a lot of archetypes and an evolving play... but it all mostly worked for me. That was some way too goddamn fucking relatable shit.
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