‘She Said’ Review: A Reckoning Gets the Incendiary and Artful Film It Requires

When eventual Pulitzer Prize winners Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey printed their first New York Occasions investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s a long time of sexual abuse and harassment in October 2017, the journalists had solely a handful of accusers prepared to go on the document. Within the months and years that adopted, greater than 80 completely different girls ultimately accused the Hollywood bigwig (and now convicted and jailed rapist) of a litany of crimes over a few years. Kantor and Twohey’s investigation (and a concurrent one from Ronan Farrow for The New Yorker, with whom they shared their Pulitzer) didn’t simply set a course for a reckoning for Weinstein and his crimes however helped ignite all the #MeToo motion on a world scale. That Weinstein’s downfall was the product of diligent reporting, dogged persistence, and the resilience of some courageous souls is important to recollect. In Maria Schrader’s clever and incendiary “She Stated,” we’re reminded of one thing else that makes for one hell of a film: It was girls who did it.

There’s, after all, a darkish irony to Weinstein — for therefore lengthy such a Hollywood titan, a bonafide super-producer — getting taken down (once more! and good! do it extra!) by way of the sort of awards-y, end-of-year true-life story the previous Miramax head in all probability would have cherished to make, again when he was, oh, you recognize, not in jail for a number of intercourse crimes. Hit him the place it hurts. But it surely’s additionally bitterly hilarious that Weinstein’s downfall got here by the hands of two girls, the sort of tenacious, emotional, careworn, and heroic individuals he spent a lot of his life and profession attempting to close down. Dozens of movies might be made about what Weinstein did, how Kantor and Twohey took him down, and the various lives his crimes disrupted, however Schrader’s would seemingly nonetheless be the most effective of the bunch, a definitive endeavor proper out the gate.

A part of that is because of Schrader’s stars — Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey, who each flip in fantastic performances — and a part of it’s owed to how a lot data Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz handle to pack into a movie that runs simply over two hours. Selecting up simply earlier than Donald Trump’s election (Twohey first got here to the Occasions to analyze the then-presidential candidate) and ending actually because the staff hits “Publish” on the October 2017 story, “She Stated” offers a strong and pin-neat have a look at the method behind reporting the story. However the movie’s best power goes past the fast-paced tick-tock side of its story and facilities on one thing a lot tougher to articulate than “it tells us all of the essential beats of the story.”

“She Stated” does that, however it additionally offers us all of the feelings of the story, too. It begins early, as Schrader strikes us via a crowded New York Metropolis road bustling with individuals — you recognize the shot, you’ve seen it loads of occasions earlier than — and as an alternative takes time to deal with girls, numerous them, common girls simply transferring about their days, speaking on the telephone, going to work, hopping on the subway. Girls. In all places. This story might be about any of them. It’s, nevertheless, principally about two of them, and Schrader and her stars rigorously construct complete emotional worlds for these on-screen variations of Jodi and Megan.

Each girls are fighting work-life steadiness because the movie opens (and also you additionally get the sense that the second you say “work-life steadiness” to them, they’d bust out laughing). Megan would be the extra outwardly cool, calm, and picked up one, however Mulligan — all the time so good at enjoying girls on the sting — brings apparent battle to the function. When “She Stated” opens, Megan is pregnant together with her first youngster. She’s additionally attempting to crack an investigation into Trump’s habits towards girls on the eve of this election. You possibly can think about the stress, however Schrader doesn’t ask you to. As a substitute, we witness Megan being berated, threatened, and intimidated by a large assortment of adversaries (together with one insanely discomfiting name from Trump himself). A pissed-off Invoice O’Reilly flack calls to scream at her, “ARE YOU A FEMINIST?” as she’s awaiting an early check-up at her physician’s. Somebody may solely do that job in the event that they actually, actually believed in it.

Jodi believes in it, too, even when she’s being stretched skinny at each flip. Whereas Kantor and Twohey’s work was very a lot constructed on their partnership, from the preliminary investigation to their e-book on which the movie’s script from Lenkiewicz is predicated, Schrader typically lets Kazan take the lead. “She Stated” wouldn’t work with out each Jodi and Megan, each Kazan and Mulligan, however the story appears to naturally run towards Jodi extra typically, and Kazan delivers at each flip. She’s tasked with the movie’s heaviest lifts, and to deem it “cathartic” when she bursts into tears within the hardest moments or “wrenching” when she should deal with the toughest elements of reporting (a scene during which she by accident lets slip a doable supply’s story involves thoughts) is diminishing. It’s greater than that.

“She Stated”

Courtesy of Common Footage

Schrader and her staff cleverly weave in a wide range of storytelling conceits to color a posh image, from assorted flashbacks to easily transferring via varied places whereas key audio is performed (one among Weinstein’s accusers visited him the day after he assaulted her, armed with a wire to document the interplay, and Schrader merely performs the audio because the digicam glides via posh resort hallways). It’s immersive and expert storytelling that telegraphs — as ever — each data and emotion.

Weinstein’s victims run the gamut, and whereas Schrader’s movie primarily focuses on among the lesser-known girls he brutalized (loads of assistants who began their careers together with his Miramax, with Samantha Morton showing as a very outspoken survivor in a single scene that stuns), “She Stated” additionally weaves within the tales of Weinstein’s extra well-known victims. Ashley Judd seems as herself. Rose McGowan is barely a voice on the telephone (voiced by Keilly McQuail). Gwyneth Paltrow is usually mentioned and solely “seems” as soon as, throughout a chilling telephone name. Equally, Weinstein is performed by actor Mike Houston, who solely reveals the again of his head (and that’s sufficient). He screams and carries on via varied telephone calls, all of them skin-crawling.

It’s not all good. A couple of stilted moments in its first act — tons of journo converse, some weird bits of name-dropping, and a worrisome curiosity in following the journalists as they take completely important telephone calls in the course of the road — threaten to dilute a little bit of its energy. That fades as Jodi and Megan push towards what we all know is inevitable, in some way nonetheless bracing ourselves for the second their story lastly floods out into the world.

Satisfying? Sure. Traumatic? Additionally sure. Crucial? You already know the reply. They already advised you.

Grade: A-

“She Stated” premiered on the 2022 New York Movie Pageant. Common will launch it in theaters on Friday, November 18.

Signal Up: Keep on prime of the most recent breaking movie and TV information! Join our Electronic mail Newsletters right here.