Thought puzzle: does “Women Talking” pass the Bechdel Test?
The women have names (all but one only have first names, if Scarface Janz means Frances McDormand’s character’s surname is Janz) and there’s only one actor who is a man (other than a brief scene with a census worker), but 100% of the discussion is about what to do because of the crimes of the men.
I think this is a good example of why the Bechdel Test is important to know about, but sometimes it isn’t the perfect fit.
Well I’m just watching a bit of it with my teenage daughter and…. He’s just had a daughter and he’s shown rolling up a towel and explaining how it’s to keep her from vomiting on herself. Jessie is off his gourd on heroin and Jane props him up with a pillow. Walter meets John de Lancie, Jane’s father, and they talk in a bar about looking after people etc. He goes to Jessie’s where he and Jane are out on gear and shaking Jessie rolls Jane onto her back and vomits. He stands there watching her die and then has a cry to himself.
And this is before the penny drops with the first time viewer about what all those cold opens are and how many people were killed because Walter was a cold blooded killer.
If you think Walter is the good guy, well the person thinking that is making it up out of whole cloth. It’s not there in the text.
Now that said we can root somehow for a bad person, though we don’t give a shit when they get theirs, it’sa trick people have been playing forever. I watched Double Indemnity recently and the protagonists are absolute slime from the get go, it’s still edge of your seat nerves as you imagine they might get away (despite the opening let you know they didn’t) but it’s also a relief when they are finally utterly doomed and no way out. A bit like when you are actually caught as a kid. Or the way that people do love to confess to the cops (coercion and beating aside, most people really do want to do it).
Thanks for the pointer.
Just watched this and had no idea what I was watching at first.
To my eyes it starts as a family-study, dips briefly into horror-thriller then returns to a darkish family story again.
Nicely, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen for a long time.
Also (and I’m not going to spoiler-blur), best end-credit sequence / dance combo I can recall.
The family patriarch, who insists even Maya and Jamie call him “Daddy,” is played by familiar character actor Colm Meaney, whose many credits include Chief Miles O’Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager
It’s not, as some were concerned, Taken with a hat. It’s real-deal Phillip Marlowe. Neeson is rather too old for the part, it’s true, but he pulls it off.
It’s adapted from The Black Eyed Blond, a 2014 Chandler-estate approved Marlowe novel by Benjamin Black (John Banville - author of the Quirke mystery series), which was better received than Robert B. Parker’s attempts at the character (and confusingly shares a title with one of Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason books).
Neil Jordon is always worth a watch. Chandler fans will be pleased, Taken fans (if they exist) not so much, and that’s good!
Bonus points for Alan Cumming’s crazy Georgia gentleman’s drawl.
Okay… if this documentary ignores laibach’s concert around the time of the signing of the Dayton Accords and just focuses on U2’s [not UK, derp!] concert a couple of years later - then it’s pure BS…
