I’ve been thinking about the portrayal of women’s trauma onscreen this fall. It started back at the Toronto International Film Festival with “The Woman King,” directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and “Women Talking,” written and directed by Sarah Polley. I saw those movies back-to-back on a September morning. I went from seeing a woman who took her trauma and became a literal warrior leader, to seeing women who were so traumatized by the men in their community that they had to make the most difficult decision imaginable: whether they should stay amongst their abusers or leave the only homes they have ever known. And then about a month later, I sat at the New York Film Festival and watched Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till,” which saw Danielle Deadwyler embodying Mamie Till’s ferocious devastation following the murder of her son, Emmett. The film makes Till’s loss and trauma palpable, and revisits how she channeled her grief into activism. Her insistence on having an open coffin for her son led to a defining moment of the civil rights movement.
Most recently, I sat in Alice Tully Hall for the world premiere of “She Said,” also at the New York Film Festival. This was a public screening with a full house – I watched “The Woman King,” “Women Talking,” and “Till” at press screenings. There was a nervous energy in the room as “She Said’s” director, Maria Schrader, introduced the film.
I found it interesting that this very American story about Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the amazingly dogged reporters at the New York Times who helped take down Hollywood’s most famous predator, was directed by a German woman, Schrader, and written by a British woman, Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Maybe it was just too close and scary for American women filmmakers to feel comfortable with? This is such a loaded story, and choosing Schrader and Lenkiewicz turned out to be an incredibly smart decision. This is a movie grounded in the story of the women who told the story, and the women who lived the story and survived one of the biggest monsters in an industry that is famous for having so many monsters and predators.
When Ashley Judd — one of the true heroines of this story for allowing her name to be used on the record — shows up in the movie playing herself, it literally took my breath away. She took her trauma and has shared it with the world in such profound ways. Her fearlessness is something that has stayed with me. And there are other survivors that appear throughout the film. This is a film that truly centers the story of the women. The casting of Carey Mulligan as Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Kantor is inspired.
“She Said” is a love letter to journalism and is a reminder of the power of journalism to create change. We’ve seen movies about journalism before. Most of us have seen “All the President’s Men” many times, and “Spotlight” won the Oscar. But this movie feels different. Since the investigative story depicted in “She Said” was published, we have seen many more women and people of color moved to the center of storytelling – which is long overdue. We have seen the trauma of women all over our theaters in stories written and directed by women. Women have hidden their trauma for so long, too long because the industry was not interested in hearing their stories. They were too busy silencing them, oftentimes with evil NDAs. No more hiding. I can only hope that this is just the beginning.
“She Said” is now in theaters.
