She Said
How do you slay a monster no one is willing to acknowledge?
Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan take on a Hollywood monster in She Said.
Going on the record is terrifying for anyone. To have your name in print next to a provocative accusation or statement opens you up to harassment, legal action, and in some cases violence. It’s hardly worth seeing your name in print when angry mobs are surrounding your house, calling your home at all hours, or sending you horrendous things in the mail.
But New York Times investigative reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) have made careers out of convincing people to go public. Twohey broke the Trump harassment story (the one in 2016, I know it’s hard to keep track) and Kantor worked with Starbucks employees to expose unfair and criminal practices in the company. Both women know a good story when they see one, and in the late 2010s they set their sights on one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein.
The Times was interested in exploring sexual harassment in the workplace. Kantor had seen actress Rose McGowan’s public accusations that a famous producer had attacked her and smelled a story. It wasn’t hard to uncover the person who attacked McGowan — everyone seemed to know it was Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein — the problem was getting someone to go on the record to confirm it.
Kantor and Twohey teamed up to chip away at one of the biggest open secrets in Hollywood: The head of Miramax Studios was a violent misogynist who assaulted and harassed women for sport. Finding survivors was the easy part, but Miramax had crafted a system to keep them silent — settling with them and forcing them to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Not only were the women terrified of Weinstein, they were terrified of getting sued. Weinstein had an army of lawyers and a tacit agreement with the press to kill any story about his misconduct in exchange for access to his stars and filmmakers.
As the duo dug through lists of victims and try to track down documentation to prove the stories they’re hearing, they come to a horrible realization: without an on the record source, Weinstein will likely keep going.
She Said is a movie about just how important investigative journalism is. It follows in the grand tradition of films like All the President’s Men and Spotlight, explaining how a dogged journalist can topple unjust systems with the power of a free press. Woodward and Bernstein exposed Nixon, the Spotlight investigators exposed the Catholic Church’s global coverup of sexual abuse, and Twohey and Kantor felled a giant of Hollywood. It’s an impressive feat, and one that’s often dismissed.
Director Maria Schrader wanted to highlight just how much work goes into good investigative journalism. Kantor and Twohey are both working mothers, both must deal with childcare, maintaining their relationships, and having every conversation they’ve ever started interrupted by a work call. Seriously one could have quite the drinking game if you took a sip every time one of them is interrupted by their phone.
Schrader also shoots the film like a spy movie, Kantor and Twohey are in clandestine meetings in restaurants, tracking down mysterious leads, long shadows following them wherever they go. It’s an interesting acknowledgement of the reach and power of Weinstein, and the lengths he went to in order to keep his behavior out of the press.
But the most effective choice Schrader makes is focusing on women. This is a story about women — how they cope with trauma, how they move forward in their lives, and how they find strength in each other. When Twohey comes off maternity leave she’s suffering badly from postpartum depression. Her female editor and Kantor both understand what’s happening and give her the space she needs to navigate that. Kantor must take calls while with her children — sometimes resorting to doling out the Netflix password to get her daughter out of the room when adult subjects are discussed.
And women also get the best, most charged scenes in the film. Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle get stunning scenes as two of Weinstein’s victims who speak with Kantor. They detail their experiences in very different ways, these are two women who found their own paths to healing and have diametrically opposed views on speaking out. But Schrader’s brilliance is making both point of views understandable. Incandescent rage and the need to ignore the past are both valid ways to cope in She Said, which points out there’s no one way to move forward from abuse.
While She Said is certainly interested in the strength of women and how they were cast aside, the movie also doesn’t really take to task the industry that upheld Weinstein and his behavior as an open secret. Yes, there are a few shouted lines that decry agents and others for doing nothing, but the movie focuses on Weinstein and his victims rather than the Hollywood system that enables predators like Weinstein to operate. When one considers the celebrated careers of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and David O. Russell, it seems that it’s fairly common for prestige and money to win out over justice. Weinstein is an anomaly in the system only in that he’s currently facing consequences.
And those consequences are very much still pending. While She Said tries to end on a positive note about the women finding the power to speak out and bring a monster to justice, Harvey Weinstein is still on trial for those charges (four of which have been dropped by a judge). And in another disheartening ‘how much has the system really changed’ moment, Weinstein’s defense attorney Mark Werksman called filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom (wife of California governor Gavin) “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.” in his opening defense statement.
See how fun it is to come forward?
It’s also worth noting the movie was produced by Brad Pitt’s company Plan B. Pitt, who dated Gwyneth Paltrow at the time of her harassment in the 90s and was married to Angelina Jolie who also accused Weinstein of assault, had a long and fruitful relationship with Weinstein even though both women told him of their experiences.
Overall, She Said is a scathing indictment of Weinstein and the ways in which women are intimidated into silence. It’s hard to call it a fun watch, but it is a good and edifying film. You may emerge from it depressed, but you’ll also be better and hopefully more aware for watching it (it made me do a deep dive into NDA laws).
Verdict: She Said is a harrowing, often thrilling look at the two women who broke the Harvey Weinstein story and brought down one of the industry’s biggest predators.
She Said is rated R and available in theaters November 18.
