Untouch­able – first look review

Although Ursu­la Macfarlane’s Untouch­able might be the first doc­u­men­tary about Har­vey Wein­stein, it almost cer­tain­ly won’t be the last. In the 15 months since the Hol­ly­wood mogul was exposed in The New York Times and The New York­er, there have been count­less arti­cles, inter­views, protests, move­ments start­ed – and Wein­stein is still yet to stand tri­al. Untouch­able seeks to get to the root of the insid­i­ous cul­ture of sex­u­al abuse and cov­er-ups which allowed Wein­stein to prey on women for four decades, but unfor­tu­nate­ly does lit­tle more than retread old ground.

Through tes­ti­mo­ny from Weinstein’s vic­tims, includ­ing Paz De La Huer­ta, Roseanne Arquette and Nan­nette Klatt, as well as for­mer Mira­max and Wein­stein employ­ees, Mac­far­lane traces Weinstein’s rise to pow­er from music pro­mot­er in Buf­fa­lo, New York to one of the most influ­en­tial men in Amer­i­ca. It’s a slick and glossy pro­duc­tion, full of styl­is­tic flour­ish­es and moody estab­lish­ing shots of loca­tions key to the Wein­stein scan­dal (New York City, Cannes, Venice, Toron­to, Lon­don), but some­how this feels strange­ly hol­low, as if try­ing to frame the sto­ry as a Mak­ing of a Mur­der­er-style true crime case.

This speaks to the major prob­lem: there isn’t much that the film can offer which isn’t already pub­lic knowl­edge, and for any­one who has read the ini­tial expos­es by Jodi Kan­tor and Megan Twohey in The New York Times and Ronan Far­row in The New York­er, the sto­ry will be a very famil­iar one. Even more frus­trat­ing are the instances where the film touch­es upon an inter­est­ing idea, only to shy away from it – when one Mira­max high-up admits that he strug­gles with guilt after real­is­ing his silence was as good as com­plic­i­ty, there’s a yearn­ing to hear oth­ers admit as much too. Wein­stein might be a mon­ster, but he was giv­en carte blanche by an indus­try too afraid of los­ing mon­ey to deny him anything.

To wit, the doc­u­men­tary doesn’t do much to posi­tion Wein­stein as part of a wider con­ver­sa­tion about the imbal­ance of pow­er between men and women, and to dis­cuss how Time’s Up and #MeToo have become big­ger caus­es than sim­ply address­ing Weinstein’s actions. Par­tic­u­lar­ly at the moment, while a man accused of sys­tem­at­ic abuse has a film nom­i­nat­ed for Best Pic­ture at the Oscars, it’s hard to feel like Untouchable’s ​‘We will not be silenced’ through­line real­ly has any actu­al meaning.

Per­haps when the dust has set­tled and more peo­ple are will­ing to tell the truth, we’ll receive a doc­u­men­tary that real­ly gets to the heart of Hollywood’s sex/​power dynam­ics, but Untouch­able feels like it’s just going through the motions.