When women speak more than truth

It is easy to forget that the MeToo movement started as an act of speech. Beginning in 2006 with activist Tarana Burke and then more widely in 2017, women used the phrase on social media to share their stories of assault, harassment, and retaliation across class and profession. For anyone willing to listen, MeToo was a digital cacophony of women’s voices speaking about experiences that had been diminished, denied, shamed, or covered up.

This collective act of women talking is the focus of two very different recent movies. Maria Schrader’s film She Said (streaming on Peacock and available for digital rental) follows the two New York Times reporters—Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan)—who broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long pattern of predatory sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood in 2017. The film’s central dramatic action is convincing women to talk. “I feel like there are a lot of women who have been through something with him, but they find it hard to talk” Jodi confesses to Megan. “It’s hard to get women to talk,” Megan admits, and even harder if they are alone in telling their stories.

She Said is remarkably restrained, almost muted. Much of the movie is spent watching Jodi and Megan travel long distances to show up at a source’s home—only to have a door slammed in their faces—or pacing, cellphone pressed to ear, no one picking up. Half of their work is sitting in silence, waiting to listen.