Curiosity 2: Women Talking

On my way home from England recently, on a mostly empty economy class United flight—oh, the luxury! three seats to myself!—I watched movies most of the way: John Wick: Chapter 4 (I blame this on my traveling companion Babar ☛), When Harry Met Sally and Stand By Me (my ripostes), and Sarah Polley's Women Talking. 

I found Women Talking, about an existential conversation conducted by the women of a Mennonite community about their future, intriguing, disturbing, liberating. But one thing I didn't understand was the use of the Southern Cross as a wayfinding mark. It's a minor scene, but it threw me.

Turns out, the original novel, by Miriam Toews (2018), is based on events that actually transpired in a Bolivian Mennonite colony between 2005 and 2009. However, the novel shifts the story to somewhere in North America. And the film was shot in Canada (where Toews was herself raised in a Mennonite community). So clearly, the Southern Cross becomes incongruous—or, to use the geographic equivalent of the temporal term anachronistic, anatopic or anachoristic. (Yes, I just looked those terms up, and am happy to expand my vocabulary.)

It's funny, though, how one little detail can derail your willingness to suspend disbelief, even if only momentarily. Because of course, any movie demands that you do so. Any movie is a story. Even if it's a documentary: it's told from a certain perspective. A particular message is meant to be delivered. And it needs to be consistent.

Of course of course, I got over that silly Southern Cross detail, when it came to simply appreciating the weight of the story—though I did keep wondering: where in the southern hemisphere are there Mennonite colonies? Turns out, they're all over. In 1995 in Bolivia, there were 25, with a total population of 28,567. They're in South Africa, Australia, throughout eastern Africa, Indonesia, Brazil.

Was I the only person thrown (if but briefly) out of the story by the mention of the Southern Cross?

That said, I was delighted to be reacquainted with the song "Daydream Believer," which appears in the context of national census takers wandering through the area, the song blasting from speakers on top of their van—completely shunned by the community, until two young women decide to go talk to the drivers:

It's so incongruous—a 1967 hit becoming the theme of the 2010 census? in Canada, no less?—and yet so very perfect: somehow, not at all anachronistic, to my mind anyway. And honestly, I can't tell you how happy that song makes me feel. Which also makes me feel oh so hopeful about the women who have been talking.

And yes, I know I've said nothing about the issues discussed in the movie. See the movie. See what you think.