She Said – Review
RUNTIME, RATING
Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Directed by Maria Schrader
**NOTE: this post will be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
The story of New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who together broke one of the most important stories in a generation— a story that helped propel the #Metoo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever.
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which marked the birth of the #metoo movement, Hollywood changed. The culture of abuse and protection was exposed to the harsh light of day, and seemingly no one was untouched.
The backbreaking work of the NY Times journalists Megan Twohey and Jodie Kantor was rightfully applauded, especially in light of the previous failures of investigations and reporting to stick, inevitably falling to the culture of protection of abusers of Weinstein’s stature.
In 2019, the documentary Untouchable was released, detailing Harvey Weinstein’s life and laying bare the atrocities he committed for decades. It was a grueling watch.
He was (is) a monster.
The following year, a fictional film titled The Assistant was released, which told the story of a woman working for a Weinstein-like character. Told in a visually muted style (to match the muted life she is living), the crimes she witnessed, was complicit in, and was a victim of were painfully depicted, their depravity matched only by their routine nature in that narrative world, an all-too-painful reflection of our own.
Now, in 2022, we get She Said, a film centered on Twohey and Kantor.
Let’s start with the obvious: investigative journalism isn’t very cinematic. It’s phone calls and research and dead ends and getting people who are afraid to talk to do just that: talk.
As such, the cinematic appeal of such a film is dependent on the subject matter of the investigation and the appeal of its characters. She Said is, as noted above, about a topic everyone agrees is morally important, and, as also noted above, uncovered by two accomplished journalists.
But the problem with this film is that the work begun by the #metoo movement is still ongoing, and the specific issue of Harvey Weinstein’s guilt is literally still be litigated. Despite currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York, he is currently on trial in California for crimes committed there. That makes this film problematic from a legal standpoint, and whose timing could be seen, ironically, to be a bit skeevy… Just like Harvey.
It’s a weird juxtaposition.
Now, cinematically, the performances by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as Twohey and Kantor are solid, as are supporting roles by Andre Braugher and Patricia Clarkson as senior personnel at the NY Times as the investigation was ongoing, and the story was being written.
Speaking of the story…
As noted above, we’ve had the documentary of Weinstein, along with the fictional The Assistant, which puts She Said in a weird spot of straddling the line between “Based on true events” (you know how we feel about that kind of disclaimer, right?), and the book written by Twohey/Kantor, adapted by screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
I think, by the way, that all journalists are secretly (or openly) frustrated novelists, but I don’t know if some of the more formal/stilted dialogue between characters here is accurate or a depiction of what they might have said or feel they should have said, as even a casual walking-the-street conversation expressing their frustration often feels, jarringly, incredibly scripted.
Very Hollywood, if you will.
The use of actual recorded conversations and having Ashley Judd appear to portray herself as she becomes the first on-the-record source for the story also blurs the line between documentary and narrative.
So, while the film’s subject matter is, clearly, important in both a historic and contemporary sense, this particular film, in light of the cinematic depictions we already have, feels a bit anticlimactic from a narrative sense.
I don’t want to tell you not to see it, because it is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but also, the irony of Hollywood making a film about an industry (journalism) they conspired with for years in order to protect themselves, and then expect us to overly praise them…
Rings a bit hollow, don’t you think? Maybe a bit self-serving?
Still, She Said has some good performances, but doesn’t really rise (as a MOVIE) above its otherwise bland narrative.
She Said opens Friday, November 18, and stars Cary Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Andre Braugher, and Patricia Clarkson.
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