We assume, when one of the victims finally agrees to share her story with New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), that this will be the most harrowing moment of director Maria Schrader’s richly compelling and superbly acted drama.
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| Investigative journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan, far left) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan), along with assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson, far right), listen with admiration and delight as executive editor Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher) crisply puts an irate phone caller in his place. |
The listener: appalled, silent, eyes growing wider by the second.
We viewers: equally stone-silent, sickened and enraged.
The story moves on; we exhale shakily, thinking OK, the worst is over.
But no: Twohey and Kantor soon reach another victim, sit quietly as another — mercilessly similar — confession emerges, this time made even more intense by the performances, and the way Schrader cuts back and forth between framed one-shots of the two actresses.
And then another. Even more awful, in part because of the repetition, the familiarity, the by-now recognized patterns of an apex sexual predator.
This is smart and savvy filmmaking. She Said deserves place of pride alongside its all-time best cousins: All the President’s Men and Spotlight.
When done persuasively — and Schrader’s film is very persuasive — nothing beats a well-constructed investigative journalism drama. They’re part mystery (just how deep and widespread IS this story?), part puzzle (how does one finesse details, acknowledgments and confessions from people unwilling or unable to talk?) and part building suspense and rage-fueled anticipation (what will it take to nail this bastard?).
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s sharp script is based on Twohey, Kantor and Rebecca Corbett’s months-long New York Times investigation into the shocking behavior of Weinstein — and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge Hollywood attitude that tolerated and even conspired to maintain it — and their subsequent 2019 book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.
This film is rigorously authentic: Names are named — to an often surprising degree — dialogue is lifted from transcripts, progress unfolds as it occurred (if, perhaps, accelerated a bit to accommodate a two-hour film).
