While tidying up the sitting room I watched (I know this is not optimum conditions for watching serious or any tv, but doesn't everyone do this?) She Said, a dramatisation about the Weinstein harassment/rape/coverup case and the New York Times' role particularly in exposing it (as opposed to Ronan Farrow's/the New Yorker's).
I'm always interested in movies like this because I want to see how journalism is portrayed, not because I think of myself as ever having been one, but I do have printer's ink in my veins (ouch) and still have some kind of, I guess, reverence for the process, and hatred for those who don't do it properly. Still, not really knowing what went on behind the scenes in exposing Weinstein I am a little perplexed by this movie, though it's gripping enough, and has some really good actors in it, doing really good acting.
What I think the film doesn't do enough of is contextualising the time before the time that Weinstein was a synonym for vile, controlling, rapist. No-one in the movie is really saying the kinds of things that I bet people did say - Harvey's not such a bad guy, everyone has their off days etc. If you were in need of convincing that there was a time when people were uncertain about how they felt, this film wouldn't really do it. I mean yes there are people afraid to talk for fear of what Weinstein would do to them in court - that's really what the movie is all about - but for my money it doesn't paint a strong enough picture of the time before the public accusations. Maybe there's no real way to do that, or possibly also that's just not the point. I don't know.
