It’s tempting to eye-roll She Said, the film adaptation of New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s 2019 book of the same name on their investigation into Harvey Weinstein.
I entered the film, from the Unorthodox director Maria Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, concerned it would feel too self-congratulatory for the diffuse, difficult, ongoing #MeToo movement, wary of another peg in the inevitable viral content-to-screen pipeline. There was high potential that it would be, like Hollywood’s beleaguered #MeToo organization Time’s Up, burdened by the albatross of celebrity – too focused on Weinstein as a singularly villainous figure, or sunk by distracting impersonations of famous people. Who wants to see an actor transform into Harvey Weinstein, even for the undoubtedly tense and cinematic moment when the producer showed up unannounced to the Times’s office days before publishing as a last-ditch intimidation tactic?
