Women Talking

Year:  2022

Director:  Sarah Polley

Screenplay:  Sarah Polley, based on the novel Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Starring:  Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand

Running Time:  104 minutes 

Genre:  Drama

In an isolated Mennonite colony women are drugged and raped over a period of years.  Their claims are dismissed by the colony's authorities as either supernatural attacks or "wild female imagination".  Until, that is one of the attackers is caught, and he promptly names the others.  The attackers are arrested and taken to the nearest city to stand trial.  The other men of the colony accompany them in order to pay their bail.  The colony elders order the women to forgive their attackers by the time they return in two days or be banished from the colony.  Left alone, the women debate how to proceed:  Should they stay and obey their orders?  Stay and fight the men?  Or leave and found a new colony?

Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, which itself was based on a real life incident that occurred in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  The film doesn't focus on the attacks, instead it focuses on the women's response, and most of the film is the debate on how they should proceed.  In fact men are more or less entirely absent from the film with the notable exception of August (played by Ben Whishaw), the gentle schoolteacher who was educated away from the colony, and takes the minutes of the meetings, because none of the women have been taught how to read and write.  In the novel he narrates the story, but in the film the voice-over narrator is the yet unborn daughter of one of the women. The other exception is Melvin (played by August Winter) a transgender man who was raped and refuses to speak except to the youngest children who he cares for while the women are debating.  However men and male violence is the spectre that haunts the entire film.  The women live in an extremely patriarchal society where they are completely subservient to the men.  The film doesn't really come down against the Mennonite way of life, none of the women want to abandon their faith they just want to interpret it in a better and more fair way.  The film has a muted, washed out colour scheme, that evokes old photographs from the 19th century.  It is briefly mentioned that the year is 2010, but the only vision of modernity is a census taker driving through the colony in an old truck, with a loudspeaker on the roof playing the song "Daydream Believer".  The film boasts excellent performances, particularly from Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw.  This is a great film, wonderfully directed by Sarah Polley, who keeps the drama tight and intense, but provides enough brief glimpses of the world away from the meetings, so it doesn't feel to claustrophobic, and also lets up the tension with some flashes of mordant humour.  It's a moving and powerful piece of quiet rebellion.

Women Talking

Nightmare Alley

Year:  2021

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Screenplay:  Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan, based on the novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn

Running Time: 150 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

In 1939, Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Cooper) is on the run from a shady past when he finds refuge in a travelling carnival, befriending fortune teller Zeena the Seer (Collette), her alcoholic husband (Jenkins), Clem (Dafoe) who runs the carnival's "geek show" and exhibition of "human oddities", and Molly (Mara) whose act consists of her being electrocuted.  Learning the secrets of the inner workings of the carnival, and particularly the tricks behind pretending to be clairvoyant, Stan approaches Molly with a proposition that they work the scam together on wealthier marks.  Two years later, Stan and Molly are successfully working their act for the wealthy elite of New York City, when Stan is approached by Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett), who has her own idea for a scam, but as the stakes are raised to more dangerous levels it becomes increasingly unclear who is playing who.

Guillermo del Toro is probably best known for his work in the horror and fantasy genre, most notably Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017), this however is not a supernatural or a fantasy film, although it is pretty horrific at times.  This is a modern day film noir, in fact the novel by William Lindsay Gresham has been filmed before in 1947, in the heyday of the film noir.  This film presents a throughly bleak portrait of human nature, almost everyone in the film is working some kind of scheme, or con, although some more innocent than others.  Bradley Cooper is good as the silver tongued charmer who hides very dark secrets and is capable of occasionally lashing out with shocking violence.  Cate Blanchett plays psychologist Lilith Ritter as a classic femme fatale all blood-red lipstick and golden gowns.  Toni Collette plays the smalltime carnival fortune teller who teaches Stan the tricks of the trade.  Rooney Mara plays the innocent, wide-eyed Molly who becomes the conscience of the film and, crucially, the only one perceptive enough to see where they are headed.  Willem Dafoe has a ball as the cruel Clem who keeps a caged man as the sideshow "geek", forcing him to bite the heads off chickens.  The twilight world of the carnival is brilliantly evoked, all mud and dirt and broken-down seedy glamour.  Del Toro is a master of disturbing but beautiful images, and he evokes a cold, bleak world, even New York is wintery streets and palatial but sterile hotel rooms and offices, The film has a complex, twisting plot, punctuated by occasional, brief, shocking bursts of violence.  While it may be too bleak for some viewers, it is a striking latter day film noir, and one of the best new thrillers that I've seen in a long time.         

Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in Nightmare Alley

The Social Network

Year:  2010
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Aaron Sorkin, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Starring:  Jesse Eiseberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Drama

This film charts the rise of the social networking site Facebook.  At Harvard University in 2003, student Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfirend Erica Albright (Mara).  Drunk, depressed and bitter, Zuckerberg takes revenge by bad-mouthing Erica on his blog and setting up a site called Facemash, for which he steals the photographs of female undergraduates from the university's "facebooks" (on-line directories of the students photographs and details) and allows users to vote on which girl they think is the hottest.  The site is so instantly popular that it crashes Harvard's servers and makes Zuckerberg notorious on campus, while doing nothing to improve his popularity with the femalle students.  The site brings him to the attention of identical twin rowing champions Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Armie Hammer) and their friend and business partner Divya Narender (Minghella) who are planning to set up a  social networking site called "The Harvard Connection".  Zuckerberg does not think much of either the Winkelvoss twins and Narender or their site, but he is intrigued by the idea of a social network and so he and his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) set up their own site called "The Facebook" which soon becomes a Harvard sensation.  However as the site goes from strength to strength, friendships and partnerships go sour and implode and Zuckerberg finds himself mired in litigation.

At first glance a movie about a guy who sets up a web site may seem like the most boring idea for a movie ever.  Who really wants to see a guy typing on a computer for two hours?  (Coming Soon:  Permanently Weird:  The Movie.  Five hours long, in black and white).  However the film is fascinating because it is not really a film about Facebook but about the people who developed it.  It's about how, despite all the money and fame, the success of the site left a legacy of destroyed friendships and lawsuits.  Mark Zuckerberg does not come across as a particularly likeable character at all however, it is to the credit of the film-makers and Eisenberg's performance in particular, that Zuckerberg is never entirely unsympathetic.  He treats people really badly in the movie, but he often doesn't seem to realise how what he's doing affects people, and seems genuinely bewildered when people react badly to his scheming and ruthlessness.

The film is full of great performances from Eisenberg onwards, with Armie Hammer being particularly notable in the dual role of the Winklevoss twins, and also singer Justin Timberlake who ironically is cast as Sean Parker, the founder of free music sharing site Napster.  The film is elegantly made, from the stately dimly lit corridors of Harvard to the cold, bright law firm offices, and the script is compelling and shot through with plenty of unexpected humour.

There are many opinions about Facebook and similar sites, some people love them while others hate everything about them.  Personally I think that the internet has changed human social interaction for the better.  The importance of sites like Facebook is huge and, I think, only being glimpsed.  Whether you love or hate Facebook, or even if you don't know the first thing about it, this is a fascinating and powerful film.  However it is important to remember, as with all films that are "based on a true story", this is just a work of fiction.  It is a drama, intended to entertain, based on someone's idea of what happened, and not a historical document.



"You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount.  The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no-one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capapable of doing.  Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"
- Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) shows how not to win friends in court.

Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) and Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network         

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Year:  2011
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Steven Zaillian, based on the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen, Joley Richardson
Running Time:  158 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, crime, drama, mystery

This is the English language film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Steig Larsson, which was first published in 2005, and was already the subject of a 2009 Swedish film.

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) is hired by Henrik Vanger (Plummer) the wealthy, elderly patriarch of a large and powerful family, ostensibly to write his biography, but in reality to investigate the murder of his beloved neice, who disappeared almost forty years previously.  Vanger is convinced that one of the family killed her.  As he investigates, Blomkvist enlists the help of troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara).  Together the two begin to discover some shocking secrets about the Vanger family.  Secrets that some would kill to keep hidden.

This is a very faithful adaptation of the novel.  Visually it is very impressive, with the bleak, wintery landscapes giving the film an almost dreamlike atmosphere.  The cast are uniformly brilliant, with Rooney Mara exceptional in the difficult role of Lisbeth Salander, who is already one of the most memorable characters in modern popular fiction.  The film also manages to condense a complex and long novel into a coherent film.  The film retains the Swedish setting of the original novel, but all the dialogue is English language, with the cast basically speaking in Swedish accents, which seems slightly bizarre.  Also the film moves at a fairly sedate pace, although there are sudden bursts of violence, a couple of which are genuinely shocking and disturbing.  

However, it is a fierce and powerful piece of work, with a superb visual sense and would be worth watching just for Rooney Mara's performance alone.

Rooney Mara is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo