WIDOWS – Review by Roxana Hadadi

Widows is about revenge and crime, yes, but primarily, it’s about power—who has it, who gets to wield it, who is protected by it, who is kept away from it. This was a concept that director Steve McQueen explored with 12 Years a Slave and that writer Gillian Flynn mines constantly in her novels (what is Gone Girl about if not a struggle for dominance in a modern marriage?), and together they create a portrait of complex power struggles, of lines of dominance criss crossing each other, of a fragile web that can unravel if even one strand is snapped.

Because let’s be clear: The women in Widows are suffering, not just because of their one-on-one relationships with their varyingly disappointing husbands, but because of a heteronormative culture in which it would be expected that these women would rely on their husbands for money, for stability, for compassion. But no one really gets that here. Continue reading…