"She Said": review

All the rightie critics were warning me off this film, and I got the distinct impression that some of those people hadn't even bothered to watch it. At its core, 2022's "She Said" is about the start of the #MeToo movement, back when the movement actually had sympathy from all quarters, especially with its initial focus on producer Harvey Weinstein. "She Said" is directed by Maria Schrader and stars Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, and Ashley Judd (who plays herself).

The plot of "She Said" is easy enough to summarize briefly: we begin in 2016 with accusations of sexual harassment by Donald Trump, who goes on to win the presidency. At the New York Times, various journalists have been pursuing sexual-harassment stories, and the focus shifts to Harvey Weinstein, about whom credible accusations have been made. Reporter Jodi Kantor (Kazan) takes the Weinstein story, and Jodi recruits the help of Megan Twohey (Mulligan, with an American accent). Both women are married and have kids; in Megan's case, she starts off pregnant, then has her child as we move forward in time fairly quickly. As with "All the President's Men," Kantor and Twohey knock on a lot of doors to collect evidence for a publishable article, but many of the women involved with Weinstein have signed nondisclosure agreements—NDAs—making them unwilling to go on the record about their experiences working at Miramax, Weinstein's production company. Oblique bits of evidence trickle in, and both women do what they can to get victims to go on record, even talking with many of these people personally. The other thing stopping most of these women from testifying is the hopelessness that comes with being convinced that nothing good will result. This conviction is so pervasive among women that it's almost like an assault victim's omertà, the code of silence known to the mafia. But the two women chip away, eventually getting Ashley Judd to go on record, followed by a deluge of others. If you've followed current events, you know how this all ends (and the movie ends with a series of title cards describing the current situation): Weinstein ended up being sentenced to 23 years in prison, and he still has charges pending. An article started the avalanche, but Kantor and Twohey wrote a book about their experience, and that was the basis for this movie.

The story follows the "All the President's Men" template pretty closely, maybe too closely for some. It also wears its agenda on its sleeve. Some righties won't like this, especially given how the movie begins with the multiple accusations against Donald Trump before moving on to Weinstein, the real focus of the story. A rightie might see the movie and be tempted to say that this is how the left sees itself: battling injustice everywhere. To its credit, the movie doesn't make any larger, explicit accusations against the right as a whole (though there might be an implicit one—see below); the focus on Trump is merely the focus on a powerful man—Trump's status as a conservative is never mentioned. The formula of two journalists "speaking truth to power," as the saying goes, is almost cliched at this point, and rather predictable (especially for anyone who paid attention to this particular bit of news over the past few years).

That said, the acting and direction are both solid, and while the movie isn't particularly exciting (it's pretty much nonstop talking), it does include a few moments of tension. Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the film is what I assume to be actual audio of Weinstein alternately pleading with and bullying Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a young Filipina-Italian model whose portfolio Weinstein was supposedly reviewing. According to the movie, Weinstein harassed Gutierrez, and when she went to the police, she was given a wire to wear and was told to meet with Weinstein again, which led to the audio recording in question. It's creepy stuff. As the movie tells us, though, the police concluded that nothing actionable had occurred, so Weinstein was not apprehended.

I was pretty sympathetic to the #MeToo movement for a long time, and while my sympathies have waned thanks to liars and grifters like Amber Heard (who falsely accused Johnny Depp of abuse she was perpetrating) and Christine Blasey Ford (the professor who accused Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her but was unable to provide any substantive evidence for her claim), I remain convinced that sexual predation is still a huge problem in Hollywood and elsewhere. Kantor and Twohey have a discussion, at one point, about the implications of what they've unearthed: if sexual harassment is so prevalent in Hollywood, then where else is it going on? It's a legitimate question, but the movie, once it focuses on Weinstein, remains fixed on him and does nothing to explore the larger issue. Zelda Perkins (Morton) gets a powerful scene in which she tells Kantor flat-out that we're looking at a widespread, systemic problem. And despite this, the movie still refuses to widen its focus.

Regarding Donald Trump, if there's one accusation that I think might stick regarding his character, it's that he's a dyed-in-the-wool sexist. I think the evidence for this is as plain as day: a series of trophy wives, his "Just look at her" comment about Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina ("Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?"), and the fact that he managed the Miss America pageant for years, which means he got used to seeing women as a commodity. But even with over two dozen women lined up against him in 2016, it appears that nothing has come of those cases. I'm reminded of Stormy Daniels's attempt to take Trump down; she ended up having to pay him after she violated her own nondisclosure agreement. In terms of evidence, it seems there's nothing solid against Trump. Is it conceivable that he has groped and/or assaulted certain women? I think yes. But nothing's been proven, and people have long misinterpreted Trump's "grab them by the pussy" remark, which was a statement about how certain women are attracted to the famous and powerful. "She Said" contains a moment in which Trump himself calls Twohey and harangues her about her role in reporting some of the claims against him. (James Austin Johnson, the voice of Trump, does a scarily convincing job of portraying the president, right down to the intonation and other verbal mannerisms. The scriptwriters, too, do a great job of portraying Trump's simplistic, "overlapping prose" style of talking.*) As to why the movie focuses on Trump at all, instead of on Weinstein from the beginning, I can only imagine that, because the #MeToo movement ended up taking down so any left-liberal Democrats, the leftie filmmakers wanted to establish a moral equivalency: "See? The right has its assaulters, too!" But the truth is that #MeToo unearthed far more problems on the left than on the right.

Overall, the movie was watchable, and since I agree that the problem of sexual predation is a real one, it's nice to see a film that focuses on at least one part of the larger problem. It would have been interesting to see a further litany of all the people taken down by the #MeToo movement, but that would have meant putting a lot of lefties front and center. This isn't to say that sexual indiscretion is purely a leftie problem: I recall big conservatives like Larry Craig, Bill O'Reilly (who gets a mention in the movie for his own scandal, which caused his departure from Fox News), and conservative pastor Ted Haggard all having problems long before #MeToo was a thing. But the movie chose its scope and stuck with it, for better or for worse. Ashley Judd plays herself in the film; I can imagine this was personal for her. Gwyneth Paltrow is mentioned a few times, and we hear her voice over the phone (Paltrow also played herself in these scenes, but we never see her). The addition of real-life victims playing themselves gave the movie more impact, but credit should also be given to the actresses who gave powerful performances in the roles of the other victims: Angela Yeoh as Rebecca Chiu, Samantha Morton as Zelda Perkins (mentioned above), and Jennifer Ehle as Laura Madden. Morton, in particular, is memorably vivid in her brief scene.

I didn't come away hating the movie, although the film raised plenty of red flags. For me, it was simply a matter of figuring out—and then ignoring—what the leftie propaganda was. Strip that nonsense away, and you're left with a story that definitely needs to be told. My own conviction has long been that maleness combined with authority can be a dangerous combination (cf. "Spotlight" and "Philomena" for examples from the Catholic Church). I don't think that's true in all cases, and I reject the PC "toxic masculinity" narrative given all the good that men do. But questions about sexual predation absolutely should be explored, and while "She Said" has its flaws, I can sense some earnestness behind the retelling of this story. I'll even give Hollywood, as a whole, some grudging credit for allowing such a movie about Hollywood to be released. Do I stand with those rightie reviewers who have vehemently condemned the film? Not really. I don't think the film deserves the excoriation it's getting from the right. Yeah, it's got a woke message, but if nothing else, that real-life audio of Weinstein begging and bullying a young model ought to give anyone the creeps.

Epilogue: "She Said" is a box-office bomb. Made with a $32 million budget but having earned just under $9 million up to now, the film is a hit with critics but not with general audiences. One character in the film says, presciently, that her worry is that the Weinstein story will go out... and no one will care. There are probably many reasons for people not to care. Cynical folks will roll their eyes at the overused—and fairly discredited—"noble journalist" trope. With so many journalists being liars and Democrat shills these days, what appeal would a movie about journalists have? Then you've got the folks who have watched the #MeToo movement go from an earnest effort to root out sexual predators to a movement that wildly lashes out at all perceived "toxic masculinity." And I'm sure a large sector of the American public is suffering from outrage fatigue—enough, already! These people just want to watch something funny or uplifting or adventurous. Whatever the real reasons are, "She Said" is vastly underperforming at the box office. I think it deserves a better fate, but a movie filled with leftist dog whistles can't be expected to be popular in today's climate.

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*That blog post was written back when I still thought Trump's candidacy was a joke. Trump was a hard sell for me, and my blog chronicles my change in attitude over the years.