First and foremost, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has found their way here and taken the time to read the things I have written. There are so many different places to find film and sports opinions these days. So, if you choose to get that here, my sincerest thanks! Looking at the analytics, I see that this little blog has surpassed last year’s total views and there’s still a whole month of 2022 to go and plenty left to cover! I’m basically caught up on seeing what I want that’s available in theaters, now it’s time to get to the business of writing about it all.
Following the playbook of many other investigative journalism films, She Said executes those plays in stride and does an excellent job of working its way through the Harvey Weinstein exposé and condemning the individual. However, as a big studio release in its own right, it falls short of its potential, opting to pull its punches when it comes to the culture of enablement that protected Weinstein for so long.
Framed against the backdrop of an impending Trump presidency, a pair of New York Times reporters team up to unravel a sexual harassment scandal involving one of Hollywood’s most prominent producers along with several high-profile celebs he victimized.
Maria Schrader’s adaptation of the book and investigation by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey wears its intentions on its sleeve. It’s also probably not a coincidence that the film was released in November of 2022 when Weinstein was in Los Angeles facing additional sexual assault charges. It is a well-executed detailing of the investigation that brought the producer down and a scathing condemnation of the man himself that utilizes actual recordings, cameos, and voices from some of the women directly impacted.
Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star as Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor respectively, providing some much-needed charisma. They are essential to making this film work and both give very strong textured and conflicted portrayals of their real-life counterparts. In a way, the film is equal parts about them and equal parts about the investigation. It plays to the strengths of the cast, which showed Schrader had a good grasp of what made her movie work.
I don’t want to misconstrue the message, this was a good well-executed film, but I have to bring in another film as a point of comparison. Perhaps, it’s not entirely fair because Spotlight did win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay in its year, but that’s why I bring it up.
Tom McCarthy’s 2015 film is special because of its attention to detail and the fact that the insane cast works so well together to elevate the story. Now, She Said doesn’t have the same caliber of cast across the board but the gap between the two is on the investigative side of the equation. I can’t speak for the Academy voters, but I would think that Spotlight won because of how thorough a takedown it is of the Catholic Church as an institution. When I talked about this film falling short of potential, that’s what I meant at the outset.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s adapted screenplay, as I said, is an excellent look at the Weinstein investigation with depth and detail. I didn’t read the book, so it’s entirely possible that the adapted screenplay is true to form. Still, it shies away from being a full-throated teardown of the Hollywood system than enabled the behavior. The word “systemic” is thrown out there and then almost immediately rolled back into the neighborhood of the ‘bad apples’ metaphor. While this film is based on the 2019 book, according to one of its former journalists who was tasked with the story, the New York Times itself had squashed an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Weinstein in 2004. That journalist is not featured in the film nor is there much in the way of culpability levied at the NY Times, or other “media enablers” as stated by Jim Rutenberg.
You can read about many things like that including author Peter Biskind who was made aware of at least one incident in 2001 but didn’t pursue it at the time because his interview subject, Brad Pitt, went off the record. If you read the film’s IMDB trivia page and start looking into things from there, there’s clearly a lot of sheltering and protections that went into place for the production of this film. I don’t know if I can say anything more without repercussions but look into it.
So, I am kind of torn when it comes to this one. I can acknowledge all of the things this movie did well and can be hopeful about the positive impact it will have, but it comes across as a Hollywood studio movie (Universal) that wants the credit for taking aim at a corrupt Hollywood system without actually going through with the takedown. I also want to acknowledge that it has been a little while between watching the film and writing about it, so it’s possible that it does a better job of that than I am giving it credit for.
Recommendation: See it for the performances and the discovery aspect of the investigation but, if you are looking for a teardown of Hollywood corruption, this may not fit the bill for you.
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