A quick take on “Thy Womb” (2012)
On the elusiveness of freedom
Author’s note: Contains spoilers. Originally posted online elsewhere in 2012.
At the end of Thy Womb (2012), you are left quite unsure what to make of it. But the film, I believe, does give you two choices: is Shaleha (played by Nora Aunor) your empowered woman or simply a victim, if not unwilling, of an oppressive society?
Of course these choices are narrow, if not inflammatory enough, and ones that I’ve simply posed for myself. The film follows Shaleha, a Tausug midwife who suffers from the irony of being the only one childless in her village. So she searches for a younger woman whom her husband can divorce her over so he can have a child. In such a tale were you have a woman, incapable of bearing children, trying to accommodate for her husband just so he can have a child à la The Handmaid’s Tale, I couldn’t but help get into these polarized choices.
Make no mistake, though, for Shaleha’s husband is no Bluebeard or Henry VIII. This is her story and she runs the show. She screens potential candidates for the woman who will replace her and haggles for the dowry of the prospective wife, all while her husband stands idly by. And when it was time, she acts as midwife to the woman, delivering her newborn child. Finally, after handing the infant to the mother, she gives an ever so slight smile for a mission accomplished. The End.
My own attempt at making sense of it all is that you get a sense of how freedom can operate within structures of power; or, simply put, how can one be free just about anywhere, for we’re always under some sort of power, however apparent it is to us. I can’t really answer the question I put. This is where the film’s narrative power lies, for it doesn’t really attempt to answer it as well.
Photo taken from:
Mendoza, Brillante (dir.), Thy Womb (Center Stage Productions Film, Development Council of the Philippines, 2012).
