Peter Howell: Sarah Polley, Oscar winner, celebrates finally being heard — and silencing the naysayers

When the 2023 Oscar nominations were announced in January, Toronto actor turned filmmaker Sarah Polley tweeted a self-deprecating selfie with a look of surprise in a doctor’s office waiting room.

“Expectations were low for today,” Polley wrote. “Here I am at a routine doctor’s appointment. I really didn’t plan this day right.”

On Sunday night at the 95th Academy Awards in Hollywood, as Polley accepted the Best Adapted Screenplay award for her film “Women Talking,” her look of surprise had changed to one of sheer joy — and no small amount of vindication.

The film is an adaptation of an acclaimed Miriam Toews novel about a remote group of religious women discussing how to respond to sexual attacks by the men in their community.

For months, following the release of “Women Talking” during last fall’s film festival circuit (where it was first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival), Polley, 44, has had to resist dismissive comments that a title like “Women Talking” is somehow both banal and irksome, especially to men.

As Polley told Vanity Fair during awards season, when male customs agents would ask her to state her purpose of travel and Polley shared the title of her film, she was met with eye rolls and groans. After this happened around 20 times, “I kind of snapped” at Logan Airport in Boston, Polley said. “I just went, ‘If I told you there was a movie called “12 Angry Men,” would you go and see it?’ And he was like, ‘Maybe.’ I said, ‘Well, I just want you to sit with that.’”

On Sunday, from the Dolby Theatre stage, Polley addressed that experience in her acceptance speech.

“I just want to thank the academy for not being mortally offended by the words ‘women’ and ‘talking’ put so close together like that,” Polley said, grinning as she clutched her first Oscar after 15 years in the movie business. She was previously nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for her feature writing/directing debut “Away From Her” in 2008.

In her speech, Polley reminded the hundreds of people in the room — and the millions more watching worldwide — that the sexually abused women in her fact-based drama were taking action against their abusers “not just by talking but also by listening,” an important distinction. She might also have added that the women in her film, including characters played by Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy, ultimately resolve to not just talk but also to do something about their situation.

Polley continued: “The last line of our film is delivered by a young woman to a new baby and she says, ‘Your story will be different from ours.’ It’s a promise, a commitment and an anchor, and it’s what I would like to say with all of my might to my three incredible kids — Eve, Isla and Amy — as they make their way through this complicated and beautiful world.”

It’s a tightrope Polley has tried to walk herself, over her many years not just an actor and filmmaker but also as a social activist, fighting against poverty and violence, while struggling to be heard over the din of louder and often male voices.

Her most famous role as an actor, in Atom Egoyan’s Oscar-nominated 1997 film “The Sweet Hereafter,” is playing a sexually abused girl in a remote town who reveals the truth about the circumstances of a tragic school bus crash that claimed many young lives.

Polley told me during an interview at TIFF last fall that it’s been a struggle to remain positive at times in her life and career.

“I’m an optimist, but I wasn’t always. I’ve outgrown my cynicism. And so I believe in people’s capacity to change. I really believe in people’s capacity to change their minds and shift, and to learn and unlearn …

“I’ve seen people who I’ve written off take responsibility and be accountable, and move in a very real and authentic way, and choose a different course.”

On Sunday night, Polley received a highly visible affirmation that she’s on the right road, one she will undoubtedly continue to follow as she continues her journey as both an artist and a public figure.

Star contributor Peter Howell is a movie critic based in Toronto. Follow on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm

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