Movie Review: She Said (content warning: descriptions of sexual assault)

A couple of weeks ago, I watched She Said for the second time. If you haven’t seen it, it is based on the true story of this article that these two female journalists, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, published in 2017 called “She Said,” detailing the multiple allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting several female actresses and assistants who worked for him. The movie reminded me of other movies I have seen about predatory behavior and sexual violence. There was a movie I saw a couple of years ago called The Assistant, and it is about a young woman who has aspiring dreams of being a film producer but works in a toxic environment at a film production company. No one at her workplace is willing to speak out against the guy who runs the company because they fear losing their jobs if they speak out. There was one scene in The Assistant that haunts me forever, and it is when Julia Garner’s character, the assistant, goes to Human Resources and tries to file a complaint of sexual harassment that she witnesses. The guy in human resources condescends to her and tells her basically that they can’t do anything about it because the guy harassing these women is a powerful man, and he fears for his own job at the company. It was extremely disturbing to watch this film because neither the assistant nor the people who worked under this powerful boss could file charges against him because the boss could fire them or threaten them, so they stayed silent while he continued preying on young women.

She Said shows how two women stood up to a real-life bully through their work in investigative journalism, and after seeing the movie a second time, I have a much deeper appreciation for anyone who works in investigative journalism because it must be a tough job. In She Said, Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) both work as journalists at The New York Times. The film opens with a haunting scene in Ireland in 1992. A young red-haired woman is walking on the beach, and she sees a film crew shooting a movie. Her face lights up, and the crew welcomes her as a new member of their team. She is hopeful that she can make it in the world of film production, and she is enjoying her time working with the team. However, in the next scene, she is running with tears streaming down her face, her heart racing fast, as she escapes from something/ someone terrifying. The movie cuts to New York City in 2016. Donald Trump has been elected as the 45th president of the United States and is under fire for making inappropriate comments about women and sexually harassing them. Megan Twohey is expecting her first child and is also investigating into the allegations against Donald Trump. She speaks with a woman who alleges Donald Trump abused her, but the woman says that the New York Times isn’t going to do anything to stop the harassment because she tried to speak out and no one did anything. Megan speaks to Donald Trump on the phone (James Austin Johnson from Saturday Night Live does the voice of Donald Trump in the film) about the allegations, and he cusses at her and threatens her. She later receives a phone call from someone who works for Trump, threatening to rape and kill her. Jodi Kantor, meanwhile, is a young Jewish woman who is happily married with two daughters, and she is doing an investigation into the film producer Harvey Weinstein, who co-founded the film company Miramax with his brother, Bob Weinstein. In 2020 Harvey was finally sentenced to prison, with eighty sexual assault allegations against him. Harvey allegedly raped several women who worked for him, and no one has taken him to trial for his crimes. Jodi reaches out to a woman named Rose McGowan, who Harvey raped when she was a young actress, and when Jodi asks her permission to do an investigation into her account of the assault allegations, Rose refuses to participate in the investigation because she tried to speak out against the allegations, but the media didn’t do anything about them. Jodi and Megan contact each woman who Weinstein assaulted, and while not all of the women are willing to come forward and talk about the trauma they experienced while working at Weinstein’s company Miramax, some women, including Ashley Judd, come forward to talk about their stories of the rape and the trauma that they experienced under Weinstein’s management. It was really hard hearing the audio of one of the experiences in the movie of Harvey coercing one of his female assistants into sex, and her telling him no over and over again, telling him to stop touching her, telling him she didn’t want to be alone in the room with him. The audio plays as the camera moves slowly through a dim hotel hallway with no one in the hallway. It was scary, but as someone who hasn’t gone through what these women went through, it was important for me to hear these real accounts so that I could understand that sexual assault is real, and a lot of women didn’t want to come forward because Harvey and Miramax forced them to sign non-disclosure agreements saying they wouldn’t tell anyone that he groomed and assaulted these women. The last experience about the young woman in Ireland was also hard to listen to because like so many young women working for Miramax, she was promised that she was going to launch her career by working with an influential powerful guy like Harvey, only to realize that Harvey cared nothing about her career or the careers of the women who worked for him. He used his influence to coerce and intimidate these young women and left them with a lot of shame and trauma, forcing them to deal with the silence and shame after the abuse on their own without telling anyone.

I still remember when I read about the allegations against another media figure, Bill Cosby, and at first, I was ignorant and didn’t understand how bad the allegations were. When I read more about the allegations, I asked my dad, “Why didn’t the women just say no? Why didn’t they speak up?” and my dad told me, “Because Bill Cosby threatened these women if they spoke up. He threatened to take away their jobs and careers if they spoke up, so they were scared.” It was tough at first because I wanted to believe it was as easy as pie to somehow speak out against sexual abuse, but after my dad explained why these women didn’t go forward with their accounts of Bill Cosby sexually assaulting them, I took a step back and thought, Damn, I need to be a better ally to victims of sexual assault. I need to educate myself more. In a college essay on sexual violence in 12 Years a Slave, I conflated the words “rape” and “sex,” and thought that the character Patsey wasn’t being “raped” but that her master was “having sex” with her. I’m glad my professors called me out a few times on me conflating rape and sex, but I finally didn’t get the message until I was on Facebook in 2017 and was reading posts by my friends and acquaintances from college about how rape is rape, not sex. I felt really stupid for conflating rape and sex, but it was a learning experience that I needed to learn from so that I wouldn’t continue to conflate rape and sex or minimize sexual assault allegations.

This movie, She Said, showed that fighting against injustice is challenging, but it is so worth it in the end because the women who Harvey assaulted didn’t have to have their trauma ignored because after the New York Times published the investigation into Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations, Weinstein was sent to prison and many women in other industries outside of Hollywood felt empowered to come forward with their own accounts of sexual violence. There was one scene that really stuck with me in the movie, and it occurs when Jodi, Megan and a member of the New York Times staff are out having drinks. They are talking about the investigation, when a young man comes up to Megan and starts flirting with her. Megan at first politely refuses, but the guy insists on getting her number. He finally proceeds to say something overtly sexual, like “I would bend you over…” to Megan, but before he can finish, she slams her hand on the table and shouts at the guy, “FUCK YOU! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” The guy leaves, and him and his friend call Megan a “frigid bitch” under their breath as they leave the bar. That scene showed me how much of an impact this investigation into the assault allegations against Weinstein are having on the women’s personal lives because maybe before the investigation, Megan wouldn’t have said anything, but after hearing experiences by the women who Weinstein assaulted, Megan realizes that she doesn’t have to take any kind of sexual harassment from any guy, even if the guy seems like he is joking around.

The movie She Said also made me think of another movie I saw called Women Talking. Women Talking is about an isolated Mennonite colony that has a long history of sexually abusing the women and girls in the colony. The women and girls meet in a private location where their husbands and sons can’t see them, and they discuss whether they are going to leave the colony or stay and fight the men who abused them. The movie is terrifying because while it shows scenes with the women making the plans to leave the colony, it shows each woman grappling with her trauma and having flashbacks to when the men of the colony sexually assaulted them. There is one good male figure in the movie who stands up for the women, and instead of mansplaining them, he listens and helps them leave the colony. He grew up with a female figure who raised him to see women as equals, so he has a different perspective on the women’s roles in the colony. He respects that they want to end years of sexual abuse in the colony and takes action to help them, even when not all of the women are receptive to him helping them out.

Also, I loved the music in She Said. Nicholas Britell is one of my favorite composers. He composed music for Moonlight, Vice, If Beale Street Could Talk and the TV show Succession. I loved the cellist’s solo parts on the score as well. The score was intense and haunting, which was fitting because the movie was intense and haunting. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to handle watching She Said a second time. But the acting by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan (and Andre Braugher, RIP) is incredible, and left me sitting on the edge of my seat. My parents watched the movie with me and thought it was really powerful. As I watched Carey Mulligan playing Megan Twohey in the movie She Said, I thought about another movie I really liked her in called Promising Young Woman, which has similar themes. Even though She Said is a true story, Promising Young Woman, even though it’s a dark comedy, raises awareness about the topic of sexual assault, which is very real, and gives it a vengeance twist in which a young woman gets revenge on the people who were involved in some way, either directly or indirectly, with the sexual assault of her friend from medical school. Cassie’s friend, Nina, was sexually assaulted in public and committed suicide after she was raped, leaving Cassie grappling with grief at losing her friend. Cassie drops out of school and lives with her parents, but she doesn’t want to feel powerless. She wants to avenge her friend, so she goes to bars, pretends to be drunk, lets a guy pick her up from the bar and take her back to his place. She pretends to be unconscious, and the guy proceeds to assault her while she is unconscious and drunk, but she fools them into thinking she is going to let them do that to her and confronts each of these men with a knife in hand and a look that says “Don’t fuck with me. Literally. Because I will kill you, motherfucker.” And it’s not just men she is getting revenge on, but also a female classmate and the dean of the university who didn’t speak out when Nina was raped in public. Cassie gets revenge on them, too. I didn’t really like the way the movie ended (I won’t spoil it, I promise) but I had to remember that it’s a dark comedy and dark comedies are usually grim and uncomfortable to watch because these movies get you to think about serious issues using very twisted humor. I don’t resonate with all of the dark comedies I watch, and frankly some comedies are too dark (or gross) for me to watch, like Triangle of Sadness (don’t look it up if you don’t know what that movie is about. I have a fear of vomiting and to this day have flashbacks to when I saw a promo for the movie trailer). But I really liked Promising Young Woman because it was clever, and Carey Mulligan’s role was epic. I really liked her in She Said, too. I have only seen Zoe Kazan in a couple of films: The Big Sick, in which she plays Emily Gordon, the real-life wife of comedian Kumail Nanjiani, and Ruby Sparks, in which she plays a character written by her real-life husband (and fellow actor), Paul Dano. I really also loved Andre Braugher’s role in She Said. He plays a member of The New York Times staff named Dean who calmly calls Harvey out every time Harvey threatens him and the staff if they publish the investigation into the allegations against him. Seeing him in his last movie role was really bittersweet because he plays Captain Raymond Holt in this TV show I loved called Brooklyn 99. Andre Braugher passed away quite recently, and when I heard the news, I was really sad and cried a lot. He played the role of Dean brilliantly, and to this day I still really miss Andre Braugher. I also recognized an actor in the movie named Peter Friedman, who plays a representative of Weinstein in the movie. Peter Friedman was in this show I love called Succession, and he played Frank, who was one of the people who worked at Logan Roy’s company Waystar Royco and is Logan’s confidant. He is a really good actor in the show, so when I saw him in the movie She Said, I was like, Oh my God, that’s the actor who played Frank Vernon in Succession! The show Succession is pretty dark, a dark comedy, a satire of the wealthy, but the acting is phenomenal, and I watched it mainly because Sarah Snook won an award for it, and one of my family members told me the show was really good, so I watched the entire thing in two months.

The movie, She Said, also gave me mad appreciation for people who go into investigative journalism. I don’t work as a journalist, so seeing the work that Jodi and Megan put into the investigation of the Weinstein allegations looks like it was serious work that required a lot of dedication. Jodi and Megan really cared about the women being able to come forward with their stories so that men like Harvey Weinstein don’t get away with predatory behavior in the future. I didn’t know much about investigative journalism other than watching a few shows or movies in the past about it. Even though the New York Times article, “She Said” gave me goosebumps when it came out and haunted me, I kind of just moved on afterwards. Then, the allegations against other powerful figures in the entertainment industry, namely the rapper and businessman Sean “Diddy” Combs, were released, and so watching the movie She Said reminded me that the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were not isolated incidents, and that there are multiple Harvey Weinsteins out there not just in the media and entertainment, but also in food and retail service, hospitality, the legal field, politics and other industries, so we need to keep talking about the topic of sexual assault even though it is uncomfortable to discuss because this all boils down to human rights and respecting the dignity of people’s lives and speaking out against anyone who tramples on the dignity of people’s lives. There was a movie similar to She Said that came out called Bombshell. I saw it a long time ago, so I can’t remember all of the plot, but it stars Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman, and it is based on the real-life sexual harassment allegations that female employees at Fox News made against the late Roger Ailes. It was a really good movie and brought to light an important issue that is very real: the sexual harassment allegations against powerful men in the media.

Overall, I really recommend you watch She Said. It is a powerful movie, and the acting is incredible.

She Said. Directed by Maria Schrader. 2022. Rated R for language and descriptions of sexual assault.