The first scene in Confirmation, HBO’s film about the 1991 Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, is grainy news footage: Robert Bork is nominated to the Supreme Court then rejected by the Senate; Thurgood Marshall announces his retirement and George H.W. Bush prepares to announce a successor. This fast-paced prologue, told through clips from CNN and the nightly news, sets the stage for what follows: A well-made movie about a sensational moment in history that aims for the detached authority of a news report.

Confirmation arrives on the heels of American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which is both a blessing and a curse for the production. Ryan Murphy’s miniseries stoked an appetite for meticulous recreations of 1990s scandals; stories that remind us of the nuanced racial and gender dynamics behind the media spectacles of the recent past. Murphy’s series also set an unreasonably high bar for this kind of drama. Unlike The People v. O.J. Simpson, which deftly used tabloid appeal and melodrama to complicate its narrative, Confirmation plays everything straight. The nightly news anchors of the 1990s—familiar faces like Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell, Candy Crowley, Peter Jennings—appear throughout the film like a Greek chorus, providing exposition and reminding us of the narrative stakes. It’s a two-hour made-for-TV movie after all, a genre that doesn’t typically allow for much experimentation or swagger.

Still, the film, directed by Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) and written by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) is gripping and necessary. Twenty-five years after Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was smeared as a “scorned woman” and an “erotomaniac,” her story is still alarmingly relevant. (This is not the first time Hill’s story has been filmed for premium cable: In 1999, just eight years after the hearings, Showtime aired Strange Justice, adapted from Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson’s book of the same name.) Confirmation is a political procedural, not a psychological drama, and the two main characters remain opaque, despite fine performances. The film’s focus is institutional failure: how the Washington of 1991, with a Senate that included just two women and a Judiciary Committee made up entirely of older white men, was set up to fail someone like Anita Hill.

Anita Hill was a 35-year-old Oklahoma law professor who reluctantly became a household name in October 1991. As Hill, Kerry Washington quickly erases any lingering thoughts of savvy, theatrical Olivia Pope from Scandal. (In a strange coincidence, the real-life inspiration for Pope, Washington fixer Judy Smith, was deputy White House press secretary at the time, and she is played in the film by actress Kristen Ariza.) Washington’s Anita Hill is judicious, every word she says carefully considered. She speaks slowly, with long pauses; slouching forward, she walks like someone who wishes no one were looking at her. Asked on the phone by a Senate investigator if working at the Education Department and the EEOC with Thomas were good experiences, she answers deliberately, “I was proud of things we accomplished.” When she puts on what would become her iconic teal dress, the camera lingers as she stands in front of the mirror, fastening the oversized buttons. In that moment, the linen skirt-suit looks like body armor.

The film’s focus is institutional failure: how the Washington of 1991, with a Senate that included just two women and a Judiciary Committee made up entirely of older white men, was set up to fail Anita Hill.

While Hill is the film’s moral center, Confirmation doesn’t belong to her. Frieda Lee Mock’s insightful 2013 documentary Anita focused on Hill’s experiences during and after the hearings, portraying her on a hero’s journey from hesitant martyr to feminist role model. During the hearings, Hill was sarcastically accused by a witness for Clarence Thomas of trying to be the “Rosa Parks of sexual harassment,” and Anita grants her that title proudly. Confirmation, on the other hand, is narrowly focused on the political process and tries not to tip its hand too explicitly.

