Back in October 2017, when heavyweight film producer Harvey Weinstein learned The New York Times was planning a major investigative piece on his long history of sexually abusing women, the bullish mogul went into damage limitation mode. “The story sounds so good, I want to buy the movie rights,” he quipped in one pre-emptive interview. But behind this performative nonchalance, he was running scared. The handful of brave victims and witnesses that Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor painstakingly coaxed into sharing their skin-crawling encounters with the bullying, predatory Weinstein soon grew from a trickle into a bursting dam. More than 80 women came out of the shadows, some of whom had lived with crushing shame, career-wrecking trauma and suicidal feelings for decades.
She Said is a sober, respectful dramatisation of the non-fiction 2019 book of the same name in which Twohey and Kantor detail the full Times investigation which won them a Pulitzer Prize (shared with Ronan Farrow) and helped put Weinstein where he is today, behind bars for rape and sexual assault. It marks an assured English-language feature-directing debut by German actor turned film-maker Maria Schrader, whose previous credits include the acclaimed Netflix series Unorthodox (2020) and German Oscar submission I’m Your Man (2021). Fresh from its European gala debut at London film festival one day after its New York world premiere, this classy bio-drama is set to screen at multiple fests over the next few weeks ahead of worldwide theatrical release by Universal in late November. Timely themes of toxic masculinity and the ongoing #MeToo movement, backed up by gutsy performances, should generate healthy audience numbers and surefire awards potential.
Essentially a newsroom procedural in the tradition of All The President’s Men (1979), Spotlight (2015) and The Post (2017), Schrader’s deluxe issue-driven bio-drama feels a little slow and talk-heavy at times, delivering more compassion than passion, more prosaic detail than visual poetry. There are also few revelations here for anyone who followed the extensive media coverage around Weinstein’s downfall. All the same, She Said is a terrific platform for co-stars Carey Mulligan (Twohey) and Zoe Kazan (Kantor), with strong support from Patricia Clarkson, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton and more. Indeed, the entire project is a fitting testament to women film-makers generally, with executive producer Brad Pitt’s name standing out among the heavily female cast and crew. A little awkwardly, maybe, given that ex-wife Angelina Jolie recently repeated her allegations that Pitt was physically abusive at the end of their marriage.
Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz wisely avoid dramatising any of Weinstein’s multiple assaults, relying instead on verbal accounts, impressionistic hints and an audio clip of a notorious real-life wire-tap sting recorded by Italian model Ambra Gutierrez. The disgraced producer himself is mostly a phantom menace in the story, his voice heard on angry phone calls trying to kill the story, then briefly seen in person from behind (played by Mike Houston) in a fraught legal negotiation scene at the Times offices. This hands-off approach feels humane and sensible – after all, the last thing a film about recent traumatic events should do is risk re-traumatisng the victims. But it also arguably robs an archetypal triumph-over-evil underdog saga of its grotesque, powerful villain.
As forensic news-driven drama, She Said is efficient and polished. But as an exercise in cinematic storytelling, it often settles for safe choices, from its familiar-looking Manhattan street vistas to its cloying chamber-orchestra score and its snappy sub-Sorkin dialogue. This flatness is perhaps inevitable, given that the episodic narrative mostly consists of detail-dense office conversation peppered with clumsily explanatory, literal-minded nuggets like: “Lisa Bloom, daughter of a feminist icon, is working for Harvey Weinstein?” Schrader and Lenkiewicz try to spice up this dry material with off-duty glimpses of Twohey and Kantor as overworked young mothers, grappling with depression and endlessly patient partners. They also add a frisson of noir-ish thriller tension with hints of sinister stalkers, abusive phone calls and countless late-night meetings with undercover sources in deserted restaurants. There appears to be a lot of eating involved in the investigative reporting game.
Mulligan and Kazan work up an agreeably fizzy screen chemistry, initially playing a lopsided good cop / bad cop couple who come to respect each other’s campaigning strengths. High-profile celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Rose McGowan hover around the edge of the story, but never appear on screen. Donald Trump and disgraced Fox News blowhard Bill O’Reilly also form part of the background noise, hinting at a wider culture of boorish locker-room sexism that the film-makers could have explored more fully. In a smart piece of casting, several real-life Weinstein accusers play themselves, notably screen star Ashley Judd and Lauren O’Connor, a former Weinstein employee whose 2015 memo about systemic abuse in the company later played a key role in bringing down her ex-boss.
But even if She Said sometimes feels clunky, the most powerful take-home message here is the liberating sense of long-silenced voices finally being allowed to speak. In that regard, the film-makers made an inspired choice to cast Samantha Morton as Zelda Perkins, a steely ex-assistant to Weinstein who resigned in protest over his assault on a young co-worker, only to be gagged by a tortuous non-disclosure agreement so draconian that she was not even allowed her own copy. This short but electrifying scene is a virtuoso masterclass in icy fury, gaining extra emotional charge because Morton is both a survivor of sexual abuse and an actor whose Hollywood career was stunted by Weinstein in real life. She publicly called him out as a bully years before The New York Times, and gets a further valedictory chance to skewer him now. Call it poetic justice, but the cold dish of revenge has rarely tasted so sweet.
Director: Maria Schrader
Screenwriter: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the journalism and book by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey and Rebecca Corbett
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Ashley Judd
Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner
Executive producers: Brad Pitt, Lila Yacoub, Megan Ellison, Sue Naegle
Cinematography: Natasha Braier
Editor: Hansjörg Weißbrich
Production designer: Meredith Lippincott
Costume designer: Brittany Loar
Music: Nicholas Britell
Production companies: Annapurna (US), Plan B (US)
Venue: London Film Festival (Headline gala)
In English
133 minutes
