About the Film
Premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, director Ursula Macfarlane's documentary Untouchable brings us face-to-face with the heart-rending serial sexual predation of film producer Harvey Weinstein. While Macfarlane does recount Weinstein's rise from music promoter in Buffalo, New York, to innovative producer, to Hollywood film potentate, the film's focus and real value is the testimony of the victims. One after another, they come before the unflinching gaze of the camera to tell their story. Rosanna Arquette, Paz de la Huerta, Hope d'Amore, Erika Rosenbaum... the famous and the unknown alike expose Weinstein's well-practiced, sickening modus operandi and the terrible emotional damage it wreaked upon them. Difficult, compelling testimony.
While the story of Weinstein's misdeeds had circulated sotto voce in the film world for years, his aggressive use of power, money, hardball lawyering, and threats against career and honor had always been enough to buy silence. Until October of 2017, that is, with the New Yorker article of Ronan Farrow, and the New York Times articles of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, which exposed the whole seamy mess with rich, deeply researched detail. His victims speak out publicly, in concert; the monster was finally undone, if not yet in a court of law, then certainly in the court of public opinion.
Untouchable adds context to the stories of the women Weinstein victimized, using interviews with those around him. Literary scout Lauren O'Connor describes the toxic culture in Miramax: "The balance of power is me: 0, Harvey Weinstein: 10." Others speak of their "survivor's guilt"—they knew, but partly didn't want to know what was happening, yet they did nothing, and a few quit. A sad commentary on a culture of power and impunity.
Nicole Guillemet
