"She Said" - Film Review
The first fifteen minutes of She Said are a whirlwind flashback to the 2016 election and The New York Times articles detailing the women who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. This sets the scene for Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan), two investigative journalists at The New York Times. Together, they begin to piece together the allegations of famous actresses and ex-Miramax employees toward famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The piece Kantor and Twohey eventually write is the beginning of the Me Too reckoning that swept through Hollywood in the fall of 2017.
The purpose of She Said is not immediately clear. The film’s target audience is likely those in the know about Hollywood who probably closely followed the downfall of Weinstein. She Said is not a movie that the casual filmgoer, who only goes to the theatres to see the latest Marvel offering, will choose. And that’s fine, not every movie appeals to every single audience, nor should it. What’s confusing is the tone of She Said. It seeks to educate its viewers about Women’s Study Theories 101 through a white feminist lens, and we should be past that. Certainly, this film’s target audience should be beyond that. She Said pushes no envelope, nor does it expand its scope to an intersectional view.
Universal Pictures
She Said aches to be the Me Too Movement’s version of Spotlight, but that’s a lofty aspiration. Crafting a movie about journalism is difficult, and Spotlight is the pinnacle of this genre. So much of what makes great journalism is the painstaking process of following leads and conducting research. Those tasks don’t always make for an engrossing film. Look at Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Even a famed director fell victim to the difficulty of adapting a newspaper drama to the big screen.
It’s impossible to review She Said without mentioning Brad Pitt’s involvement. He’s one of the cofounders of the Plan B production company, and he worked with Weinstein numerous times during the heyday of Miramax. Plan B produced She Said, and Pitt continued to work with Weinstein despite the fact that Angelina Jolie and Gwenyth Paltrow told him of Weinstein’s assaults. It’s a complicated web that should not be overlooked when discussing She Said and Pitt’s involvement. It’s unfortunate that this needs to be mentioned and could potentially overshadow the successful aspects of She Said. However, it also speaks to the larger issue of Hollywood, as well as other industries, and the ways men in power are protected.
Universal Pictures
To its credit, She Said never devolves into a salacious reenactment of Weinstein’s alleged actions. Instead, the camera stays focused on the women as they recount the horrors that allegedly happened within Weinstein’s hotel rooms. These are the film’s strongest moments, when the actions are laid bare and there is nothing to distract the viewer. They’re forced to sit and listen to what the women lived through. These retellings are in stark contrast to the rest of the script, which comes across as underdeveloped. Mulligan does her best to elevate it to something more, but she’s simply not given enough to work with.
She Said is a weak simmer of rage. As a woman who loves movies, it’s difficult to reconcile with Hollywood’s system of protecting abusers who are often responsible for the decision-making processes at the highest levels of this industry. She Said should have been scathing, a full-blown, overflowing, boiling pot of rage. Instead, it’s lukewarm, never as damning as it could be and never as critical as it should be.
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