She Said Review

Not only is She Said an important, modern retelling of Hollywood woe and disgust, it is an extremely well-worked feature that gets to grips with good journalism. What a slump adaptations of journalism found themselves in over the past few years. Although Blondshell held much the same message at the heart of She Said, it is the latter that works better with the material present. Right at the core of She Said is an appreciation for good journalism. By that nature comes an appreciation for the dedicated work Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey were responsible for. It cannot be overstated just how impactful the original report was. Harvey Weinstein will rot in prison, hopefully hell too, and She Said gives an intimate showcase as to the horrors of Hollywood subversion. 

Maria Schrader is right at the apex of her work. She Said gives her the cutting-edge of journalism and the newsroom but manages, like all great dramatics, to blur the real life of people hard at work on themselves and their writing. It does damage to shout in a room where nobody listens is the core that She Said works from, and it is quite the Rose McGowan piece to rely on. Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan are supremely well-cast and battle through tough scriptwriting. It has much to get through and has two hours of well-paced quality to it. Kazan is shifted to the forefront in those early moments and marks a dependable lead. Schrader knows to take moments of unmoved silence, of little action on the screen for the brutality and the words to take hold. 

Those brutal moments all play into presenting Weinstein as a shadowy figure, an ominous all-seeing, all-knowing entity who was wise to the ways of The New York Times. She Said struggles to make much of that, its clear bogeyman cannot also be the shrouded figure. If it can be done, She Said misses the mark with its expectation and fumbles some of that pacing. It is still damning enough to work and finely tuned as the family lives blur themselves into the reporting life, the late-night calls and off-the-record chats that inform an on-the-record claim made elsewhere. Thriving in that are Kazan and Mulligan, but Patricia Clarkson, Samantha Morton and Andre Braugher are nicely cast supporting performers too.  

Brave, but not just in the obvious sense of the word. She Said is a thoroughly moving piece because seeing the newsroom work and the clattering of frustrated heads together is as good as it gets. The New York Times is a cornerstone of history, of revelation, and many forget that. All the President’s Men does well to understand and profile that. She Said is a mere continuation of their laboured work and the quality of good journalism. Little bits and pieces that make sense to the brain of someone in a newsroom, or rather working from home in endless nights of anxiety about complaints and crushing blows of good journalism. She Said profiles the very highest point of what journalism can achieve, and the very low feeling it can give to those writing away toward the truth. Entertaining, engaging, and likely the best modern-day journalism tale put to screen in years.