She Said – The Spark that Ignited a Wildfire [Review]

In the film Primary Colors, a movie that could not be made today in any way, shape, or form (because it was critical of the Democrats), a young office worker is approached by Billy Bob Thornton, playing a James Carville-type. “Want to see? It’s a python,” he says. She looks at it and says, “I’m telling you, I’ve got a python in here.” He skulks away but then is berated by Adrien Lester, who’s supposed to be George Stephanopoulos, with “Do you ever hear of Anita Hill?!”

Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Elaine May, this was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

This film was released in 1998, shortly before I started this site. Between then and now, everything changed. An entire generation came of age that would never understand that scene, could never understand how going along with a guy whipping it out would be considered “cool.” But that was how we saw it back then, more or less. There’s a reason for it. There is a long history of excusing it.

The James Carville type was influenced by the Bill Clinton type. The Bill Clinton type was influenced by the JFK type. Ever since the death of JFK, our movement on the Left was looking for another like our once and former King.  Gary Hart was kind of, sort of that guy. He was hit with a sex scandal. Bill Clinton was more that guy than anyone who had come before. Democrats had not held onto the presidency for terms before Clinton since FDR. It was a big deal to have a charismatic Democrat president.

That JFK was what we called a “womanizer” meant he had a way with the ladies that everyone mostly ignored. A guy like that could snap his fingers, and women would come running. They did this for two reasons. First, no one would dare say no, and second, he was attractive, and there is something about power that attracts people, especially women.

Our view of it was that women could handle themselves and that they were going in willingly, especially Monica Lewinsky. It was out of this worldview that Harvey Weinstein was given such a pass for so long for his behavior. And likely why he believed that having that kind of access to women meant that he’d arrived. He was now high status, powerful enough that it was part of the job.

What led to the Harvey Weinstein reckoning and the Me Too movement, not to mention where we are today, was the election of Trump. This is where Maria Schrader’s film, She Said, begins. With Trump. It wasn’t just that Trump was the reason for the moral panic ignited by the Weinstein allegations. Still, one of the reporters believed that breaking the story of Trump’s accusers “meant nothing” because Trump was elected anyway.

That is the setup for the movie to show that she was reluctant, at first, to get on the Weinstein story. She was harassed and even received death threats. Did she want to go down this road again?

She Said is a slow burn of a movie that gets better as it goes along, thanks to a strong ensemble of players, including Samantha Morton, Jennifer Ehle, and the two leads, Carey Mulligan (Megan Twohey) and Zoe Kazan (Jodi Kantor). Rebecca Lenkiewicz adapted the book about the case from Twohey and Kantor, the two New York Times reporters who broke the case.

As they begin to track down the stories from women that span decades, they run into the roadblock of no one wanting to go on the record, which is the opposite of what ultimately happened with Me Too, where everyone wanted to go on the record about everything. But back then, no one wanted to be exposed and become a target for harassment, legal action, and who knows what else.

As the women tell their stories, they get worse as the whole thing unravels. What the film does best is convey the magnitude of Weinstein’s behavior. By now, after the Me Too movement led to some 200+ men losing their jobs, not to mention Al Franken being pushed out of Congress, Charlie Rose and other icons brought down, none of that really compares to what Weinstein has been accused of.

Schrader takes us into the story through the two lead actresses, both wives and mothers, not to mention women in the workplace who have undoubtedly seen their share of inappropriate behavior of one kind or another. But if you look at that Primary Colors scene, you’ll see that most of us didn’t see sexual harassment and sexual assault as the same thing.

Weinstein’s compulsive addiction didn’t get increasingly risky. It was always risky. It was never a matter of Bill Clinton and the women who lined up outside his office to have a sexual encounter with him, or even Trump, who was sought after by women. In these cases, these men began to believe that any woman would naturally want them to make a pass at them – and at some point, just stopped asking.

But Weinstein was different, and this film illustrates why powerfully. It shows the women from the early days who were just beginning their careers, in their early 20s, put in situations with Weinstein, like taking notes on a trip to Cannes or working late. Whatever it was, there was that awkward moment when he would either be “aroused or furious.”

Enough women had complained over the years that there were 8-12 settlements. That’s how compulsive he was. That’s how pervasive it was. That’s how long he was allowed to get away with it. There was a climate of fear around him and a culture of silence. He used fear and intimidation to feed his addiction. Women were expendable, and there was an endless supply of them. No one warned them. They were sent into the lion’s den every time.

There is no other way to look at it.

While all of the films haven’t been seen this year, there is probably no more historically important film than this one. Schrader doesn’t sensationalize it but instead keeps to the facts. And that can sometimes be a problem for the film in that both the female leads, for instance, could have used some fictional elements for the sake of drama. Their husbands, for instance, are blurred figures holding babies and are mostly props.  They might have offered a dimension of what it was like to be covering a case that was upsetting where sex was concerned — how did that affect sex with their husbands?

Overall, though, the film accomplishes its intended goal. It is about a time when women did not feel like they could tell the long-buried stories that had haunted them throughout their lives. That story is worth telling, especially since it led to an avalanche of memories and trauma.

I have mixed feelings about what ultimately became of the #metoo movement and where it took the film industry, not to mention the country. We now have young women who are paranoid about working in films without intimacy coordinators. They have “sensitivity readers,” making sure there are no major triggers in books that might upset people. It seems to have started as a much-needed reckoning but then devolved into something that looks like a moral panic.

Since the Summer of 2020 mostly wiped away the #metoo panic and replaced it with panic around racism, we might have forgotten just how crazy things got between 2018 and 2020. It has also inadvertently led to more women represented in film behind the camera; more awards won for women. Now that it’s 2020, we’ve moved onto gender being a construct. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Schrader’s She Said takes us back to the moment it all began. It serves as a necessary reminder of all that it took to get those stories told. Now it will be left to Oscar voters to find closure to what happened right under their noses for decades. They will have to reckon with all of the great films Weinstein was responsible for getting made and the awards they won.

Todd Field’s film TÁR asks the question as to what ultimately matters more. The work or the behavior, and who will decide that over time? Does each new generation evaluate the behavior of the past? That has been true in our country for the past 20 years.

It’s been four years since the Weinstein allegations erupted. Having clarity about a time that now seems foggy is a good way to remember what happened, how it happened, and why. The film condemns Weinstein, but it also shows how many people were involved in making sure none of it ever got out, using lawyers to keep him insulated from consequences.

Someday, the whole story of the #metoo movement will be told. The good, the bad, and the ugly. But for now, we’ll settle for She Said, one of the best films of 2022.