Starring: Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Zach Grenier, Angela Yeoh, Sean Cullen.
Distributor: Universal
Runtime: 128 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Two New York Times journalists investigate sexual abuse in the workplace. Their findings lead to the entertainment industry and, ultimately, to the exposure, arrest, trial and prison for Harvey Weinstein.
In sexual harassment trials, He Said has had more standing than She Said. She Said is the title of a series of articles by New York Times journalists Megan Twohey (Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Kazan), who followed leads on issues of sexual harassment in the workplace, taking them to the entertainment industry, to Hollywood and to the now-jailed producer, Harvey Weinstein. They won a Pulitzer Prize for their investigations.
Here is a drama which keeps the attention all the way through. It is in the tradition of newspaper investigation films – thinking Watergate and All the President’s Men, clerical abuse and Spotlight, the Pentagon Papers and The Post. We are with the journalist every step of their investigation, taking some moments out for their private lives. Twohey pregnant and then experiencing post-natal depression, while Kantor, of Jewish background, has a husband and two children. They are supported well by their husbands and care for the children.
Journalists spend a lot of their time on the phone, making contacts, following leads, anonymous tips, exercising patience, and always trying the power of persuasion. Mulligan and Kazan bring the two journalists to active life. And, at the New York Times (much of the film shot in the actual offices), there are the sympathetic, but accuracy-demanding for accuracy powers that be editor (Clarkson) and executive director (Braugher).
With Harvey Weinstein in jail and a long sentence, other charges pending, this material is in the public arena. Rose McGowan who was at the forefront of accusations against Weinstein, is heard, by an actress, in phone calls. There are quite a number of mentions of Gwyneth Paltrow. But, most strikingly, Ashley Judd, appears as herself, re-enacting scenes of her making complaints, her accusations, her decision that the journalists could go public with her name.
Especially effective are interviews with women who worked with Weinstein in Hollywood, in London, in Hong Kong. Well worth seeing are the interviews with the three women, introducing them with some background contacts, two of them in England with Kantor venturing to meet them. Zelda Perkins is played by Samantha Morton, a powerful performance, most of it with the two women sitting in a cafe and the quietly impassioned telling of the story. This sequence remains in the memory. We are also introduced to Laura Madden, suffering from breast cancer, a mother, unwilling to talk about her experiences with Weinstein but eventually relenting, another powerful interview sequence, this time by Jennifer Ehle. In a way, these two sequences, and a third with a young woman from Hong Kong (Angela Yeoh) are the heart of the film.
There is also reference to Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker, his parallel investigations – and he later shared the Pulitzer Prize.
There are many male characters in the film, executives who worked for Weinstein, some who controlled the payoffs to quite a number of women (an important area of fact-checking for the journalists), lawyers, agents, some eventually prepared to give hints, and some to talk.
And, at the end, Weinstein himself appears, that is an actor who, from the back, look like Weinstein, and has him visiting the New York Times offices. And there are his phone calls to the editors, when it seems that he is beginning to run scared.
In recent years there was the television series, The Louder Voice, and the film, Bombshell, exposing the sexual harassment and behaviour of Fox News’ Roger Ailes, so harassment material has been seen recently on our screens, but the series and film were about investigations within Fox News and its journalists.
But, together, they form what will be the beginning of many films and series tackling the issue, challenging societies consciousness and confidences, and exposes which must be made.
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