She Said is a timely reminder of the role of journalism in revealing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual abuse against women. Based on the New York Times newspaper’s investigation and the book of the same name by reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, Maria Schrader’s film is a solidly performed and competently narrated chronicle of the necessary banality of rigour.
The backdrop is the election of Donald Trump as America’s President and the rise of MeToo, the movement to expose sexual harassment, abuse and rape at the workplace. As Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Kantor (Zoe Kazan) tirelessly dig for evidence of Weinstein’s crimes, She Said takes its place among films about heroic journalists burning up the phone lines and beating down doors in their quest for the truth.
She Said cleaves closer to Spotlight (2015) in its workmanlike visuals and by-now-familiar newsroom debates. While the texture of the classic All the President’s Men (1976) is missing, there’s a lovely tribute in She Said to that Watergate-era movie’s iconic sequence, in which the clattering of typewriters segues into the military music that accompanies the swearing-in of Richard M Nixon as America’s short-lived president.
Shots are fired early on in She Said, when Kantor stumbles onto chatter about Weinstein’s serial assaults. If Kantor has to balance work with her family duties, Twohey walks into the investigation soon after having delivered a baby girl.
Some of the drama in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s cogent screenplay centres on the women toggling between their personal and professional lives. The frustration felt by the journalists after meeting various women who refuse to come on the record carries over into the 129-minute film, which kicks off good and proper with a moving cameo by the remarkable Samantha Morton.
Ashely Judd, one of the few Hollywood stars to openly speak of her horrid experience with Weinstein, plays herself. Among the actors who portray the women who courageously testified against Weinstein are Jennifer Ehle and Angeloa Yeoh.
The film belongs to these survivors and their harrowing personal accounts. In the moments when they articulate their experiences, She Said’s unvarnished narrative style pays the richest dividends.
A confession by one of the women that she wore two pairs of tights to delay Weinstein’s assault, if only by a few minutes, is one of She Said’s most heart-rending scenes. When the women finally begin to speak, the film gains raw power and wholly vindicates its faith in the ability of honest and dogged journalism to give voice to injustice.