Sarah Polley: Underrated Actor and Director
Sarah Polley: Underrated Actor and Director
On Women Talking and her early performances
Chances are that you haven’t had the opportunity to see Sarah Polley’s new feature, Women Talking. United Artists Releasing is in charge of distributing the movie; its widest release was 153 theaters. Not ideally the widest debut for a film. It’s a shame because Women Talking is easily one of 2022’s best movies.
Women Talking essentially followed a group of women who are debating their future. Why does this matter? The women are all part of a community that suppresses and abuses the women. Now they must convene and decide whether they’ll accept the status quo and stay, fight back against the men, or take their fate into their own hands and escape. It’s a fantastic ensemble performance including Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Francis McDormand, and Ben Whishaw.
I remember buzzing after I saw it after my TIFF screening thinking I’d seen a masterpiece on the level of 12 Angry Men, but I guess I was one of the few that felt that way. Despite being included in the AFI Movies of the Year and nominated for Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild, Women Talking is not the surefire Best Picture nominee I would’ve imagined when I walked out of that theater in Toronto. I highly recommend Women Talking and hope that with a more easily accessible digital release, more people get to see the movie.
Sarah Polley was not an actor or director I had much knowledge of and I find that I’ve become a fan of Polley’s work not only as a director with Women Talking but also her performances in two other movies, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Weight of Water.
Released by the Criterion Collection in January 2023, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen images the famous stories of Baron Munchausen into a magical adventure. The character was initially created in 1785 by German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe and continues to be a widely read series. Director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits) was given an enormous budget to bring these magical tales to life and the result is nothing short of magical. It’s one of those how did this get made stories because it’s an incredibly expensive film with barely a star to sell it (actor John Neville is the titular Baron Munchausen).
It’s one thing to have a magical adventure, but in order for the events unfolding to be believable, there needs to be a stand-in for the audience in the movie. That’s where the young Sally Salt (Sarah Polley) comes into play. She’s a child whose skeptical of the claims that Baron Munchausen has made, so she follows him on his journey to find his comrades. Their journey takes them into the stars to meet the King of the Moon (Robin Williams in an uncredited role) and face-to-face with Venus (Uma Thurman) herself. It’s easy to see Polley’s talent for acting right away in this role, but apparently, it wasn’t all sunshine on the set. Polley has said that she felt unsafe on the set and given everything her character faces in the movie, that makes sense. Nevertheless, she’s terrific in the movie and the new 4K from Criterion is beautiful to behold. You can check out the movie for yourself from Amazon.
I hadn’t expected to watch two Sarah Polley movies in January ‘23, but in an upcoming appearance on the Almost Major podcast, I discussed the Kathryn Bigelow-directed The Weight of Water. By no means am I suggesting you watch The Weight of Water, but Polley’s performance is the best part of it.
Based on the novel by Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water tells two loosely connected stories—in 1873 there has been a murder, and the surviving witness Maren Hontvedt is testifying against the man responsible. In the present, photographer Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is researching the murders with her husband (Sean Penn), brother-in-law, and her brother-in-law’s new girlfriend (Elizabeth Hurley). Polley plays the part of the surviving witness, and we get to see her story unfold from when she first got married, to her family coming to visit and stirring up long-buried feelings. Her story is undoubtedly the more interesting of the two narratives and the less said about the present-day material the better.
Despite having worked in over 50 movies/television shows according to IMDB, I wasn’t too familiar with the work of Polley as an actress, and I’ll certainly be looking back at her career to see more of her work.