She Said (2022 | USA | 129 minutes | Maria Schrader)
In many ways, She Said fits the mold of a classic investigative journalism thriller. Two reporters toil tirelessly against very powerful forces to nail down a story that will take down a very bad guy. Further, anyone with any awareness of the course of the last half-decade’s recognition of sexual misconduct in the workplace almost certainly knows what became of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s efforts to bring the abuses of Harvey Weinstein to light in the pages of America’s newspaper of record. Knowing how something turns out, however, isn’t necessarily an obstacle to crafting a film this that revels in the process of getting the big story.
In adapting the book of the same title (albeit with a much wordier subtitle, Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement) written by the protagonists in the aftermath of the their culture-shaking reporting, director Maria Schrader makes a series of incisive choices to bring the world of journalism to the big screen. Working from a nuanced screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida), the film first draws us in through the lives of its two star reporters. Carey Mulligan plays Twohey and we meet her in the waning days of the 2016 election in the thick of breaking a story about allegations of Donald Trump’s history of sexual harassment. She’s pregnant and balances the stresses of angry phone calls with visits to her OB-GYN. Zoe Kazan plays Jodi Kantor, a mother of two who juggles family life with her reporter husband while conducting investigations into toxic corporate workplace cultures. When the story jumps five months ahead, we’re reminded that the Times didn’t avert a Trump election but it did knock Bill O’Reilly off the air. By this point, Twohey’s at home on maternity leave, struggling with postpartum depression and Kantor’s taking inspiration from a speech that Ashley Judd gave at The Women’s March for what will be her next big story.
Importantly and refreshingly, the film spotlights what the physical practice of doing journalism looks in the twenty-first century: buzzing iPhones at all hours of the night, breaking interviews in one room while a newborn sleeps in the other, reviewing documents on the same kitchen island where a pre-teen daughter’s doing homework intrusions into sleep, getting in touch with sources on the way into the subway. It captures how two women, in inadvertently coordinated sundresses, negotiate who’ll be the “nice cop” when they show up unexpected to a potential source’s front door, which reporter can and can’t hop on a flight at a moment’s notice due to childcare responsibilities, and how the toll of reporting on awful men changes their reactions to intrusive comments from strangers at bars. It’s a distinctly female-centered take on a genre that so often features swaggering reporters whose lives outside the newsrooms rarely merit more than an afterthought.
As Kantor, Kazan gets a lot of the spotlight as the reporter who tracks down sources, at their homes, on family vacations, or in clandestine meetings in swanky restaurants late at night. She displays a sense of persistence and empathy as she navigates their willingness to speak to her at all, convincing them that their stories matter, and eliciting their difficult decisions about whether to go on the record. Mulligan shines, too, albeit with a higher degree of difficulty. She shows us Twohey negotiating with the empty misunderstood pangs of postpartum depression, seeking purpose in a return to work, and persevering through questions of whether to continue pursuing this particular story. Although she has some moments with verbal fireworks (with language too spicy to make it into a network Oscar clip), much of the emotional and professional journey is conveyed with an incredibly calibrated internal performance. One scene that might in another director’s hands be a verbal jousting match, instead hinges entirely on the depth of emotions flickering across Mulligan’s face through a soundproof glass window.
But as fascinating as the work of the journalists is, Schrader wisely recognizes that the real heroes of this story are the women who told their stories of abuse at the hands of powerful producer Harvey Weinstein. The most famous victims don’t appear on-screen. Rose McGowan is a combative and disappointed voice on the phone, frustrated by the Times’s previous coverage of her. Gwenyth Paltrow is ever on the periphery, central to the story, but also only depicted through inquiries and one remarkable phone call that elevates the ominous nature of Weinstein’s reach.
Instead the weight of conveying the horrors inflicted over many decades falls to Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, and Angela Yeoh who play a Miramax employees (Laura Madden, Zelda Perkins, Rowena Chiu) whose promising young careers were derailed by coercive encounters with a man whose unchecked power was enabled by a company, culture, and press corps willing to look the other way. The choice to center these stories is insightful and the execution of each is a masterstroke. In stark terms, they relate the incidents themselves in stomach-turning detail, as well as the the life-derailing aftermath of stalled careers, shame, and the pervasive loneliness of life under a non-disclosure agreement. Each woman has their own reasons for breaking their silence; each revelatory interview grants them a full sense of personhood, conveying the difficulty and rationale for speaking to the reporter. Highly reserved, yet markably effective flashbacks emphasize their youth and power imbalance rather than leering at the horrible encounters. A robe on the floor, a running shower, a hotel hallway, a pair of optimistic young women at a party as backdrop to narration speak volumes more than any salacious dramatic recreation.
(A small spoiler: The exception is an appearance by Ashley Judd, who appears as herself. It’s an astonishing choice that breaks the film’s reality wide open. We see her, via Zoom, tells her own story of a coercive hotel encounter with Weinstein and the detrimental effect that her refusal of his advances had on her ability to get work. She appears later, at a critical juncture in the story’s publication and the effect of casting one real person, especially one whose acting career was quashed by this monster, brings a jolt of electric recognition.)
Amid other decisions of production design, the film’s lived-in reality is also richly textured due in large part to incredible access to the world of the New York Times. Many scenes appear to have been shot in their actual offices. Sly confrontations with Weinstein’s lawyers take place in the modern design of the great open cafeteria. Reporters stride across bustling newsrooms or take important calls in the natural light of splendid architectural stairwells. Teams huddle in glass-walled offices to strategize, with sparks on the executive level with Andre Braugher providing notes of no-nonsense humor as Executive Editor Dean Baquet and not nearly enough of Patricia Clarkson as Rebecca Corbett, the persistently investigations editor who mentored, encouraged, and supported Twohey and Kantor’s work. Their scenes together, jockeying to weave the many threads into a coherent piece, strategizing about how to get the evidence necessary to bring a credible story to print, and standing their ground against Weinstein’s legal team as superstar composer Nicholas Britell’s score propels the action brings together the classic feel of a propulsive journalism movie. Before even entering the theater, we’re aware of the seismic ripples of their work, the force of the #MeToo movement, and the criminal cases, but none of that diminishes the suspense of journalists huddled around a computer, giving one last read through, and hovering a mouse over their content management system’s “publish” button.
She Said arrives in theaters on November 18.
Image courtesy Universal Pictures.