Besides the obvious description, Sarah Polley ‘s Women Talking (‘22) is a long nocturnal discussion in a barn about whether or not a group of Mennonite women should more or less submit to an obviously intolerable situation or gather their things and split. You’re sitting there throughout the film and asking yourself “what’s to debate?”
Sidney Lumet ‘s 12 Angry Men (‘57) is about an all-male jury deliberating the guilt or innocence of a teenaged boy who may have stabbed his abusive father to death. And yet it’s really about the issue of reasonable doubt, which a single, well-educated, fair-minded juror (Henry Fonda) persists in exploring on a logical basis until he gradually persuades 11 fellow jurors that he has a point.
