thought-provoking
Most would say the #metoo movement owes its frenzy to one man, Hollywood heavyweight producer and accused sexual predator and rapist Harvey Weinstein, but that would mean concentrating on the male and forgetting the names of the women behind the movement, and we’ve been doing that for thousands of years. She Said rectifies this.
Maria Schrader’s She Said unravels the explosive thread followed by New York Times’ reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), who broke the Weinstein story. Based on the book of the same name written by the reporters, and adapted for the screen by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, the film is strictly dialogue-driven – this is the conversation Kantor had with a victimised actress, this is what Twohey said when she phoned someone who used to work for the Weinstein company for verification, this is the discussion the two reporters had with their editors about what to prioritise – and there’s much to say about this approach.
Schrader has clearly placed full trust in the narrative as something inspiring in its own right and has spectacularly resisted cliché. Did Twohey and Kantor choose late nights over family dinners? Yes. Did their partners make a big deal of it for the audience to see? No. That sort of dramatic response to an unravelling-of-the-decade is unnecessary, as would be a scene in which the two women get drunk and bond over their own awful experiences with men, which also did not happen. Distractions such as these would take away from the very focused reportage and ruin the pacing, which is thrilling. And to add to the no-nonsense value of the film, Mulligan and Kazan are pared back to perfection in their performances, as are Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher as their editors.
It’s interesting to note that over 80 women in the film industry have accused Weinstein of sexually inappropriate or criminal offences, and these include actors Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, both of whom told their then boyfriend / husband Brad Pitt prior to public knowledge, and yet it’s Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment that has co-produced the film. This might make sense if Pitt hadn’t worked with Weinstein on his film Killing Them Softly, which came out in 2012, after Pitt had known about the sexual harassment. This scenario begs the question: already getting Oscar buzzes, will She Said be a film that’s celebrated for its commitment to social justice and women’s rights when behind the scenes it’s as male-dominated and sleezy-Hollywood as you can get?
Reviewed by Heather Taylor-Johnson
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