SHE SAID – Review by T.J. Callahan
She Said : “ I wish I smoked or something.”
She Said is this year’s Spotlight…on the sexual misconduct of movie producer, Harvey Weinstein. It’s shades of All the President’s Men as journalists Twohey and Kantor edit the actions of one of the most powerful bosses in Hollywood…with the click of a mouse.
She Said is the story of New York Times reporters, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s relentless determination to expose extreme sexual harassment in the workplace. Following leads from actresses Rose Mc Gowan and Gwynneth Paltrow, the pair focused on Weinstein and the supply chain of abusers in the movie industry.
Twohey and Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize winning expose helped bring the #MeToo movement into the forefront and gave thousands of women the courage to tell their stories in hopes of changing, for the better, workplace environments everywhere.
Carey Mulligan is Megan Twohey and Zoe Kazan is Jodi Kantor. They play the working moms with vulnerability and strength. Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher are their supportive and thorough editors. The New York Times office plays itself as does Weinstein accuser, Ashley Judd. All other victims and Weinstein himself are played either by actors or heard through voice recordings.
She Said takes us on the journalistic journey of how a story is conceived, investigated and put to bed, as they say in newspaper jargon, focusing mainly on the writer’s sources and extracting more facts than emotion. The film conveys the women’s passion for exposing the truth, but rather bland backdrops make the chase less compelling.
She Said will leave you horrified, yet proud of those involved, but how director Maria Shrader gets us there is rather black and white. My husband, Ricky, gives this film one eye open for too much talking and too little action. I give She Said a 6.5 out of 10.
