I've heard this movie marketed and talked about a lot. The story overall is basic and not that fascinating, a Black female professor accuses Judge Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment 10 years ago as he is just about to be confirmed for the Supreme Court. She writes her accusation down and shares it with a Congress investigation team. This of course causes the media to pick it up. As the case reaches the media Republican senators now don't want to confirm Thomas as a justice before hearing her out. She presents her case in a Congress hearing and Thomas defends himself. It's he said she said stuff. The same thing happened to Brett Kavanaugh. A female professor appeared with sexual harassment accusations that yet again was a he said she said case hence didn't have further evidence. The polls show one thing in these cases: Democrats believe the Democrat in such a case and Republicans believe the Republican. No matter what side either of them are on. There is no good evidence either way. You just have to hear people out and make a subjective judgment. But likely you already made up your mind beforehand and whatever people say won't mean much. Your political ideology will decide who you believe.
In these cases where someone is about to be elected political leader there is often someone popping up at the last minute with some story about something negative the person did. Usually these stories are fake or extremely exaggerated. With Kavanaugh there were a ton of women coming out regularly with sexual harassment claims and being interviewed by big left-wing media. Some of the cases were so fake that not even the people who hated Kavanaugh could believe them. Especially sexual harassment accusation claims are popular in these cases as you don't have to rely on any physical evidence. Someone just said or did something without anyone else seeing it. It left no marks and the accuser didn't have to tell anyone about it as it was maybe not even illegal. These cases always end up with nastiness from both political parties leading nowhere. At the end of the day it's not easy to believe new accusations that are 10 to 30 years old with zero witnesses. Memories fade fast so it's not clear you can recall non-aggressive events correctly after 10 years. What is true? How much is true? How bad is the event? How much could be a misunderstanding?
The movie itself is presented from Anita Hill's point of view. We see Clarence Thomas worry about stuff and Republican politicians using dirty tactics to confirm his nomination. But they never seem to care about bringing in evidence from his point of view. The producers clearly do not like Clarence Thomas. The movie doesn't make him out to be nasty, crude, or mean though. They tried to present him as he is as a person and the actor playing him is spectacular! But there are no scenes taking his side over hers at any point. While the opposite is true half the time.
The script writer also wrote the fake historical movie Erin Brockovich (2000) and then a TV show about a r#pe case where the police didn't believe the accuser. She likes stories about women not being believed as they go against some powerful men. Unfortunately the Erin Brockovich script is quite a mistake on her part. The misinterpretation of legal facts in that movie makes me worry about her neutrality as a writer, but then you do need heroes and villains in movies and she knows how to write that into a story. Brockovich is in real life a sleazy liar. She constantly lies and makes up claims to get rich. She's a scam artist. In the movie she was a hero. How is that?
This movie unfortunately also takes liberties with the real case to make it look like Anita Hill is 95% telling the truth. With such political appointments you often have a lot of rumors and angry voters from the opposite political party. Some people invent fake stories, some have old claims with no evidence. Then there are political teams searching the country for all such stories and finding the best ones to use in Congress. They then prepare the witness and create giant teams to make the message and story clear. It becomes an attack carefully controlled top-down where the accuser is just their mouthpiece. In the movie they have some scenes with Anita Hill telling the story to her friend and initially being unwilling to testify. We also see her cry about not being believed. All of this is one side of the story. It's Anita Hill's story retold exactly as she told it. We don't know how Congress found her or how willing she was to put Thomas in the spotlight. It's easy but fishy to have scenes where the accuser tells the story before the political team contacts her. In reality we seldom know what happened first. Did the political team contact her because she once worked for Thomas and disliked Republicans or did she tell her story and then get contacted? Obviously the Democrats would like to make it seem like she was just a random woman to them. In these cases it's impossible to know how the story came about. She may have invented it or this may have happened as shown in the movie with her actually believing the story fully. With Thomas there is no scene where he shows himself to be innocent in the same way. No scene where he hears the accusation and looks shocked. No scene where he initially thinks it may be a joke. No scene where he asks who Anita Hill is or says she's unattractive and that he only likes White women. No scene where he is shown to be a person who cannot say such sex stuff. These sort of scenes would make him look 95% innocent. But again, we don't know what happened to him or her outside what the cameras picked up in real life. So either way you make stuff up. The movie picks a point of view. It's not exactly factually wrong. We don't know what happened. It's just very one-sided to such a degree that it hurts the quality of the movie. The acting, sets, and camera work is all spectacular. I did enjoy the movie. But if you know the real story and know how impossible it was to take a side on any of the accusations you will find the movie to be eerily biased. I do think she's fairly convincing in how she explains her story. On the other hand it also seems like Thomas would never do the things she says he did. I can't imagine someone like him being this perverted and weird this openly only in this one case and then never again in any setting. So what happened? Did some other guy do it to her or did Thomas just do something less extreme? Who knows.
I think if the movie title was "Anita Hill's Story" it would be more proper. But then I don't really need to watch any movie presenting the other side as the opposite story is that nothing happened, quite boring. So what to make of the bias?
This movie reminds me of another historical Black movie, Marshall (2017). About the justice Thomas replaced, Thurgood Marshall. That movie also tries to make the case look unsolved until the end where it completely reveals what actually happened. I feel the same thing happened here. The movie makers couldn't keep the mystery a mystery in the movie setting even though we don't know what actually happened in either case. This is why the Republicans here are evil while Biden is a good person. It's how Anita Hill or someone on her team would have experienced all of this. It's a shame the Thurgood movie is about him being a fighting superhero while a similar movie about a conservative Black justice does the opposite. Hollywood gonna Hollywood.
In these cases where someone is about to be elected political leader there is often someone popping up at the last minute with some story about something negative the person did. Usually these stories are fake or extremely exaggerated. With Kavanaugh there were a ton of women coming out regularly with sexual harassment claims and being interviewed by big left-wing media. Some of the cases were so fake that not even the people who hated Kavanaugh could believe them. Especially sexual harassment accusation claims are popular in these cases as you don't have to rely on any physical evidence. Someone just said or did something without anyone else seeing it. It left no marks and the accuser didn't have to tell anyone about it as it was maybe not even illegal. These cases always end up with nastiness from both political parties leading nowhere. At the end of the day it's not easy to believe new accusations that are 10 to 30 years old with zero witnesses. Memories fade fast so it's not clear you can recall non-aggressive events correctly after 10 years. What is true? How much is true? How bad is the event? How much could be a misunderstanding?
The movie itself is presented from Anita Hill's point of view. We see Clarence Thomas worry about stuff and Republican politicians using dirty tactics to confirm his nomination. But they never seem to care about bringing in evidence from his point of view. The producers clearly do not like Clarence Thomas. The movie doesn't make him out to be nasty, crude, or mean though. They tried to present him as he is as a person and the actor playing him is spectacular! But there are no scenes taking his side over hers at any point. While the opposite is true half the time.
The script writer also wrote the fake historical movie Erin Brockovich (2000) and then a TV show about a r#pe case where the police didn't believe the accuser. She likes stories about women not being believed as they go against some powerful men. Unfortunately the Erin Brockovich script is quite a mistake on her part. The misinterpretation of legal facts in that movie makes me worry about her neutrality as a writer, but then you do need heroes and villains in movies and she knows how to write that into a story. Brockovich is in real life a sleazy liar. She constantly lies and makes up claims to get rich. She's a scam artist. In the movie she was a hero. How is that?
This movie unfortunately also takes liberties with the real case to make it look like Anita Hill is 95% telling the truth. With such political appointments you often have a lot of rumors and angry voters from the opposite political party. Some people invent fake stories, some have old claims with no evidence. Then there are political teams searching the country for all such stories and finding the best ones to use in Congress. They then prepare the witness and create giant teams to make the message and story clear. It becomes an attack carefully controlled top-down where the accuser is just their mouthpiece. In the movie they have some scenes with Anita Hill telling the story to her friend and initially being unwilling to testify. We also see her cry about not being believed. All of this is one side of the story. It's Anita Hill's story retold exactly as she told it. We don't know how Congress found her or how willing she was to put Thomas in the spotlight. It's easy but fishy to have scenes where the accuser tells the story before the political team contacts her. In reality we seldom know what happened first. Did the political team contact her because she once worked for Thomas and disliked Republicans or did she tell her story and then get contacted? Obviously the Democrats would like to make it seem like she was just a random woman to them. In these cases it's impossible to know how the story came about. She may have invented it or this may have happened as shown in the movie with her actually believing the story fully. With Thomas there is no scene where he shows himself to be innocent in the same way. No scene where he hears the accusation and looks shocked. No scene where he initially thinks it may be a joke. No scene where he asks who Anita Hill is or says she's unattractive and that he only likes White women. No scene where he is shown to be a person who cannot say such sex stuff. These sort of scenes would make him look 95% innocent. But again, we don't know what happened to him or her outside what the cameras picked up in real life. So either way you make stuff up. The movie picks a point of view. It's not exactly factually wrong. We don't know what happened. It's just very one-sided to such a degree that it hurts the quality of the movie. The acting, sets, and camera work is all spectacular. I did enjoy the movie. But if you know the real story and know how impossible it was to take a side on any of the accusations you will find the movie to be eerily biased. I do think she's fairly convincing in how she explains her story. On the other hand it also seems like Thomas would never do the things she says he did. I can't imagine someone like him being this perverted and weird this openly only in this one case and then never again in any setting. So what happened? Did some other guy do it to her or did Thomas just do something less extreme? Who knows.
I think if the movie title was "Anita Hill's Story" it would be more proper. But then I don't really need to watch any movie presenting the other side as the opposite story is that nothing happened, quite boring. So what to make of the bias?
This movie reminds me of another historical Black movie, Marshall (2017). About the justice Thomas replaced, Thurgood Marshall. That movie also tries to make the case look unsolved until the end where it completely reveals what actually happened. I feel the same thing happened here. The movie makers couldn't keep the mystery a mystery in the movie setting even though we don't know what actually happened in either case. This is why the Republicans here are evil while Biden is a good person. It's how Anita Hill or someone on her team would have experienced all of this. It's a shame the Thurgood movie is about him being a fighting superhero while a similar movie about a conservative Black justice does the opposite. Hollywood gonna Hollywood.