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A journalistic investigation on a genre and structural par with All The President's Men, She Said follows the ignition of the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein as two determined New York Times reporters gather together the threads of his undeniably, unspeakable crimes. She spoke. Camus goes on the record.
 
  "It's very rare to open a script like that and be blown away by that, and that's what happened to me. It's very complex. It's bold to include so many topics, to include so many appearances without necessarily explaining everything, and to introduce so many characters. I read it breathlessly, like a thriller, even though, yes, we all know this story and how it ends."
  Director Maria Schrader*

 

 

Justice in movies (social or otherwise) sometimes feels very satisfyingly like the truth getting its revenge (and if you are a Klingon, it's "…best served cold.") Yes, we know how this investigation ends but it is riveting to be told the nuts and bolts story that dug up and brought to light what we now all know, or can easily find out. Please find a link to the first breaking New York Times' story that started a massive power shift in all aspects of our culture at the end of the review.** The most powerful independent film producer of his era abused his power in untold ways over decades coercing young women into sexual acts and then paying them off with settlements and a binding and restrictive Non-Disclosure Agreement. I did some research on NDAs for an article I was writing and found out that an NDA is not binding if the 'secrets' kept involve illegal acts. Perhaps that only pertained to UK NDAs. That didn't come up in the film though I kind of hoped it would. It might have enabled a lot more women to have come forward earlier. Weinstein was a serial sexual abuser of women and it's not hyperbole or exaggeration to say that he destroyed a lot of women's lives, in particular young women who believed they could not deny what Weinstein asked for given his power and leverage in the film industry. His victims' youth and inexperience made them more susceptible to his relentless cajoling and you get to hear an example of this (recorded by one of his victims, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, as part of a sting operation) tastefully visualised by many corridors of hotels. His power enabled him, and others, to their shame, enabled his power. All power to Brad Pitt who stood up to Weinstein after finding out that the producer had propositioned and touched his then girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow. Alas, he didn't know the extent of Weinstein's chronic abuse of women. Pitt is one of the executive producers of She Said, being the man behind the aptly titled company 'Plan B'. It's a strange coincidence that there's a rap artist called 'Plan B' and She Said is the name of one of his songs released in 2010…

In 1976, All The President's Men arrived in cinemas and did something that I didn't believe cinema was easily capable of. It made an investigation into a crime with no overt action and paltry cinematic potential (men talking to men and sometimes to women) profoundly cinematic and as riveting as any great action film. I cannot help but be gripped time and time again as I revisit it alarmingly often. If anyone out there can explain how I am able to get so much repetitive pleasure from (a) a story I knew well so no surprises there, (b) a film I now know if not backwards then forwards in selected chunks and (c) people just talking to people, then it's a spell director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman have cast and its magic is still surprisingly potent. Best to remind you that Goldman was unhappy about his involvement with the film considering Robert Redford (with his producer's hat on) guilty of "a gutless betrayal". Redford supported writer Nora Ephron and one of the original journalists Carl Bernstein to pen a version of a script without Goldman's knowledge, with many fictional snippets making Bernstein 'catnip to the ladies' and more. Goldman had tirelessly laboured on trying hard to be faithful to the truth. Goldman got the sole credit and it is a cracking screenplay. Redford later claimed to have rewritten ninety per cent of the script with the director but this has been refuted by what seems to be pretty solid research.***

Pitching the story in She Said

But in comparison with She Said, President's Men is shot with much more foreboding (thank you cinematographer, Gordon Willis) and its mid-70s vibe with film grain, smoking abundant and era-specific detail seems a lot more organic than the Apple iPhone and MacBook Pro festival that She Said inevitably is. It has no era-specific choice but to frontline the tech. After all, the film is depicting events only six years old. There was a sense, from my point of view, that the whole film was taking place in a glass fronted Apple store. Now, cards on the table, I've been an Apple/Mac fan since 1985 and have many Apple products that I do believe have enhanced my life ("a bicycle for the mind," as Steve Jobs once famously said.) But the high visibility of so many Apple products (all too true, I acknowledge, so I don't have a critical leg to stand on) make She Said seem lighter and less portentous than its illustrious forebear. Aside from one phoned-in death threat, a jiffy bag of pooh and the ominous metaphorical shadow of the powerful man under investigation, the lightness of tone is never really dimmed. This shouldn't make She Said any lighter than President's Men but it curiously does with the cinematography in the former being very bright and frame wise very open. Each scene, while well-lit and pleasing to the eye, is very well-lit and gives the whole film a brightness that a bit of darkness or shadow would enliven. Throughout President's Men, we are often in darkness and shadow, the lair and realm of Deep Throat for example. What is it about car parks and secrets? One aspect of the film that does provide a sense of unease and apprehension is Nicholas' Britell's superior score staying quietly in the background for a lot of the mix. But it does its job prompting the audience to think about the terrible ramifications of the actions of just one man and the social context built around power and success that allowed him to go unpunished for decades.

The film starts in 1992 with a young girl who watches with awe a massive galleon moored on the coast of Ireland with lots of 18th century dressed actors and extras scurrying about on the beach. This level of film-making must be breathtaking to stumble upon (nowadays the conjuring up of a beautiful full sized galleon would be the work of the visual effects artist I strongly suspect as it may have been in this instance). Delirious with the promise of a future in the industry and starting at the very bottom as a runner, we suddenly cut to her actually running, stricken by fear and shame as she flees having been, unknown to us then, horrifically abused by one of the industry's most monstrous characters. She Said then brings us up to 2016 (surely to be trademarked as the year the human race collectively lost its mind) with the 'pussy grabber' nonsense and Trump's shocking ascendancy to the presidency. Two reporters on The New York Times are introduced, one a mother to be and another with a daughter. The former, Megan Twohey, played by Carey Mulligan, is gently cynical, sharp and wholly believable as a new mother with post-partum depression exacerbated by the horrors being slowly prised from the victims. The latter, Jodi Kantor, played winsomely by Zoe Kazan, bright-eyed, carefully and sensitively probing, receives a tip about the opening scene's victim, Laura Madden, played very effectively by Jennifer Ehle as an adult (who dazzled as Amanda in Rose Glass's superb Saint Maud.) IMdb curiously does not list the actress who played her younger self and both iterations are superbly played. Ah, Lola Petticrew. Thank you, L.A. Times. This is puzzling. Not only is Petticrew's name nowhere to be found on the cast and crew listing of She Said, the film is not mentioned on her own IMdb page. This is exactly how conspiracy theories start. It's probably just a very dull oversight. And yet…

The two women team up and armed with their iPhones and MacBook Pros slowly prise truths from women whose lives were irrevocably side-lined and in some cases destroyed by the abuse culture in the media, specifically by Weinstein. There is a strong element of motherhood being reluctantly sidelined and like a fair clutch of movies in which working women's relationships break down (The Devil Wears Prada, for one) because of the hours required to keep sources in orbit, it was gratifying to see the husbands as steadfast, supportive and in one delightful scene taking the piss out of his wife's laser focussed concentration. "I'm having an affair," announces Kantor's partner. Cut to Kantor bathed in a retina screen glow utterly oblivious to his gentle mocking. Like defence or prosecution lawyers, who regularly have to deal with the basest and very worst aspects of human behaviour, I wondered if this continual drip feed of darkness impacts their lives. It must skew thoughts to a degree. The trickle that became a wave subtly affects both women in different ways. Having a private conversation, Twohey is propositioned by a surly, insistent man who has no idea who this women is and how aggressive she feels about 'the male gaze' at this moment in time. You get the impression from Carey Mulligan that her expletive explosion was more gratifying to perform than most scenes in She Said. On the calmer side, her partner Kantor gets to internalise her growing disgust and let's face it, excitement at bringing this monster down. When Ashley Judd agrees to go on the record, her breakdown is beautifully played by Zoe Kazan.

A traumatised Laura runs in She Said

On the supporting side, Jennifer Ehle shines as Laura, wracked with indecision and facing a horrible medical procedure. If there is a 'Deep Throat' in She Said, it must be ex-personal assistant Zelda Perkins strongly played by Samantha Morton. Morton always delivers and she literally does in her character's case, as she's the first to offer documents that point at Weinstein's wrongdoing. It was nice to see Zach Grenier as Mirimax's money man, Irwin Reiter having his eyes opened to the depth of his employer's abuse. If you see Grenier and wonder as I did, I'll put you out of your misery. He played the receiver of daily latte enemas, Richard Chesler, Ed Norton's boss in Fight Club. It's in his final scene where there's almost a literal touching moment thrown away out of the left edge of frame. He's just allowed Kantor to reap some information and as he leaves in a wide shot, Kantor extends an arm to touch him, presumably, in gratitude but she misses (I assume) as he's out of the frame already. The practise of leaving a double space after a full stop is corrected which plastered a wide grin on my face as my wife still does this. It all has to do with typewriters assigning the same amount of space to every letter so 'i' is surrounded by white space while an 'm' fills it. This is due to the uniformity of the heads of the type bars or strikers that make physical contact with the paper. But on screen fonts don't need to work like that anymore so the double space is now strongly discouraged. And it was only after the third 'exorcist' was mentioned that my far from perfect hearing finally figured out that Weinstein hadn't hired Max von Sydow or Jason Miller. It all made sense as soon as you put an 'ant' after the word… Exorcist-ant… Ex-assistant. Jesus.

To close, I wrote something very similar to the following quote from Rotten Tomatoes but then decided simply to present it: "Although She Said struggles to add cinematic flair to its fact-based story, it remains a worthy, well-acted tribute to journalistic integrity." While that was largely true about what I thought I'd feel about President's Men and was surprised by how cinematic it turned out to be, She Said has one moment of cinematic flair and that can be depicted as a twenty-fourth of a second. It's a well-timed cut by editor Hansjörg Weißbrich from a carefree and excited Laura, to a post Weinstein attacked Laura running from a traumatic experience from which she can never escape. The rest of the film, while honest and undeniably entertaining, doesn't take advantage of big screen storytelling as much as it might have. That said, its two hour plus running time never dawdles (both Mulligan and Kantor have buckets of charisma) and if you're into the journalist genre, it's a fine example of the real thing, extraordinarily faithful to the story told by its brave and heroic women and the way the reality unfolded.

 


* https://www.indiewire.com/2022/11/she-said-director-maria-schrader-interview-1234782400/

** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

*** https://bluetoad.com/publication/?m=4973&i=67460&p=4&ver=html5 (Pages 2-7)

She Said poster
She Said

USA 2022
129 mins
directed by
Maria Schrader
produced by
Lexi Barta
Dede Gardner
Jeremy Kleiner
written by
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
based on the New York Times investigation by
Jodi Kantor
Megan Twohey
Rebecca Corbett
based on the on the book "She Said" by
Jodi Kantor
Megan Twohey
cinematography
Natasha Braier
editing
Hansjörg Weißbrich
music
Nicholas Britell
production design
Meredith Lippincott
starring
Carey Mulligan
Zoe Kazan
Patricia Clarkson
Andre Braugher
Jennifer Ehle
Angela Yeoh
Maren Heary
Sean Cullen
Anastasia Barzee
Keilly McQuail
Hilary Greer
Samantha Morton

UK distributor
Universal Pictures Int (UK)
UK release date
25 November 2022
review posted
28 November 2022

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