By: Andrew Wing

She Said is a 2022 American biographical drama film directed by Maria Schrader (Unorthodox, I’m Your Man) and written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (writer for Ida and Small Axe), based on the 2019 book of the same title by reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. The film stars Carey Mulligan (Drive, Promising Young Woman) and Zoe Kazan (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Big Sick) as Twohey and Kantor, respectively, and follows their New York Times investigation that exposed Harvey Weinstein's history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women. Patricia Clarkson (Shutter Island, The Green Mile), Andre Braugher (The Mist, Primal Fear), Jennifer Ehle (The King’s Speech, Contagion), and Samantha Morton (Synecdoche, New York, Minority Report) co-star, with Ashley Judd (Heat, Divergent) appearing as herself.

The book was optioned in 2018, and the film was announced in 2021 as a co-production between Annapurna Pictures and Plan B Entertainment. Filming took place in New York with cinematographer Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon, Honey Boy). During post-production, editing was completed by Hansjörg Weißbrich and the score was composed by Nicholas Britell (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk).

She Said had its world premiere at the 60th New York Film Festival on October 13, 2022, and was released in the United States on November 18, 2022, by Universal Pictures. It was also named one of the best films of 2022 by the American Film Institute.

THE GOOD

As a huge fan of the Oscars and all of the awards shows, She Said has been on my radar for a very long time. Anytime there’s a journalism movie like this, it is usually going to be in the awards conversation. And whenever there’s a movie that deals with the movie industry itself, that is usually going to be in the awards conversation as well. That said, She Said checked both of those boxes as it follows the New York Times investigation that exposed former film producer Harvey Weinstein's history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women that worked in the film industry. Needless to say, I was pretty eager to check this one out, but did it live up to the hype? Keep reading to find out!

I certainly think it did! Now I am a huge fan of journalism movies. From the classics like All the President’s Men to recent ones like Spotlight and Bombshell, and I do not think I’m overreacting when I say that this belongs in near the same realm as those other movies. This movie is more like Spotlight as it is straightforward and faithful to how the story unfolded and I loved it! This movie never felt amped up like some of the other movies in this genre like Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 from a few years ago (a movie that I also loved), and I felt that was the right way for the director Maria Schrader to go about this. This movie really just is the reporters slowly doing this story and I just thought that was a good choice because it was important to see how these two incredible women broke this story and it also still managed to build a lot of tension.

Aside from Schrader’s solid direction, I was really impressed by Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s adapted screenplay. There are so many interesting and great scenes throughout the film, and a lot of those I felt were a credit to the dialogue. For example, there are a number of interviews that take place throughout as the reporters meet different people as they’re in pursuit of writing this piece on Harvey Weinstein and all of the dialogue in all of those scenes is really good and had me absolutely locked in. There are a number of standout moments in the film from the ensemble cast, and I’ll touch on that, but I think these moments worked so well because of Lenkiewicz’s screenplay that is a lock to be nominated for an Oscar and may even win.

But now onto the performances of Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan. I am a fan of both of them, and I really liked both of their performances in this even though they weren’t career-best performances. Kazan played Jodi Kantor and Mulligan played Megan Twohey, and you could tell how immersed they were in these roles. It was really cool seeing the actresses themselves being completely immersed in their work of playing real people who were completely immersed into their work. Does that make sense? Well anyways, I do think Mulligan did have the better performance and I could very well see her getting a Best Supporting Actress nomination that would be well deserved.

As good as the lead performances were from Kazan and Mulligan, the performances that really shined in She Said were the ‘one-sceners’ that played during the interviewees. For starters, Samantha Morton has one scene where she is truly phenomenal, and Jennifer Ehle had a couple of scenes where she really stole the show. Those two were probably my favorite performances here, but I also quite enjoyed Andre Braugher as Dean Baquet, and Peter Friedman as Lanny Davis. All in all, as good as these performances were, part of me wishes we got more of them, but I still really liked the film overall.

In closing, I just wanted to shout out some of the technical elements of She Said. I thought the editing was good which is essential in these journalism movies, the visuals were interesting given all of the different locations we get, and Nicholas Britell’s score was really good. Britell is just great, and he used a lot of cascading pianos and strings in this score and the score as a whole was just super prominent in the film at all the right times.

THE BAD

Now I obviously really enjoyed the film, but I can definitely see some people not liking it as much as I did. As I previously said, this movie is straightforward and it doesn’t fabricate the story, so there aren’t a lot of creative liberties taken to dramatize the story, and I do think that because of that some people will view the movie as being either boring or dry, and I respect that. Also, the two main characters that we follow don’t really get arcs in the film which will be a problem for some people, but at the end of the day, these women are already heroes just for doing their jobs, and despite me knowing how the story ended, I was still emotionally invested in the story and also the characters so I can’t complain too much.

THE VERDICT

Maria Schrader’s She Said is a really good journalism movie that follows the New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and their investigation that exposed Harvey Weinstein’s history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women.

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan both have good performances as Kantor and Twohey respectively, the story is powerful, the writing is really good, and it’s just an easy movie for me to suggest checking out!