She Said: LFF Film Review
I love investigative journalism movies so I was particularly excited by She Said because it’s about a piece of explosive investigative journalism that I vividly remember reading on the day it was published in October 2017.
The film follows The New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein by journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan). For decades, the movie producer had been protected by a system that silenced any woman he harassed, assaulted or raped. As an extremely powerful man in Hollywood, it was very difficult for women to talk about what he’d done to them or have anything done about it. This film tracks the mammoth challenge Kantor and Twohey faced to get named sources on the record and hard evidence to back up their story, and honours the bravery of the women who came forward for that original piece.
The expose about Weinstein was a watershed moment for Hollywood and society at large – it prompted many more women to speak out about him and other powerful abusers and made women from other workplaces feel like they finally had a voice to speak up against sexual predators. So it was fascinating to watch how Kantor and Twohey broke the story I knew so well – the hours they put in, the legwork, the dead ends and the breakthroughs. At the time, they had no idea of the seismic impact their work would have and that it would lead to a prison sentence for Weinstein. They won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting and rightly so.
She Said is a hard watch but an important one – thankfully, we never see any scenes of harassment or assault or see Weinstein’s face. The film made me incredibly emotional at several different points just thinking about how brave these women were to come forward about an incredibly influential man who has successfully killed stories about his predatory behaviour in the past. This was certainly the case with actress and accuser Ashley Judd, who plays herself in two small but pivotal scenes. I was floored by the fact she agreed to be in the film, recreating scenes from the investigation.
The drama, directed by Maria Schrader, isn’t perfect though. It felt longer than 2 hours and 8 minutes, the pacing wasn’t 100% the whole time and it could have been tighter. But the investigation genuinely took a long time and there are a lot of sources and stories to cover within the feature so I understand why it felt a little long. I also appreciated that Schrader showed us Kantor and Twohey’s home lives too and how they had to rely heavily on their partners to do most of the parenting during the investigation.
Mulligan is excellent as the forthright Megan, but it was Kazan who really stood out for me. She is the quieter and less intimidating of the pair and you can just tell how much she cares about this story. There is a moment when she cried and I cried with her! They have solid support from Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher as their editors and Jennifer Ehle as accuser Laura Madden.
She Said is an illuminating behind-the-scenes look at everything Kantor, Twohey and these brave women did to bring down Weinstein. A must-see.
Seen as part of the London Film Festival. In cinemas from 28th November.