Monday, June 5, 2023
She Said (2022)
One review I read characterized this as a tough but worthy watch, and I would agree. It chronicles the backstory of how on October 5, 2017, a New York Times story by reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor made public what had been whispered about for years. One of the most powerful men in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein, who made films that made millions at the box office and got dozens of Oscar nominations and three Best Picture wins, was a serial sexual predator whose abuses were covered up by his studio with hush money payments. That he used his position to extract sex from women was well known, but the extent to which he raped unwilling women was less well understood, and at least in this account, is what turned the tide and helped amass the kind of evidence that was needed to get by the newspaper's legal team. So for a long time a blind eye was turned on sexual harassment and no one bothered to pick up that rock and look more closely at what was underneath it.
That reporting had concrete effects. It helped inspire countless #MeToo revelations, the departure of other top executives, and systemic changes that have given women more opportunities and more protection in the film industry and in other workplaces as well. The toll that it took on the two women who reported the story is also well portrayed. Bearing witness and keeping people's secrets that they weren't ready to divulge is a heavy burden, and the support both women had on the home front was also pretty incredible. A well told but difficult to hear story that is interesting even though we know the outcome from the beginning.
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