BDirected by Kitty Green Starring Julia Garner and Matthew McFadyen Review by Jon Kissel |  |
Director Kitty Green’s past as a documentarian is all over her first feature, The Assistant. Her journalistic drama is the recreation of a single day in the life of a fictionalized movie producer’s office. This producer, never seen and only heard through doors and over phones, exists in a pre-MeToo world that allows him to flaunt his casting couch practices and berate his staff, particularly new-ish assistant Jane (Julia Garner). Jane’s day is so stressful that one can see her life expectancy shorten the longer she stays in her job. One more implied demand to look the other way, and her telomeres shorten. One more tacit acknowledgement that everyone is complicit in their own way, and her resting blood pressure rises. In its dedication to a single shift and its setting, The Assistant can become as interminable as an actual white-collar day but the complete experience is greater as a whole than in parts. It’s worth the gray atmosphere and harsh lighting to absorb the lesson.
Green begins her film with Jane rising before the sun and it ends with her heading home long after dark. Within this unconscionable work schedule, she’s not chasing down scripts or making deals, but cleaning the office before anyone arrives and making coffee. At the third or fourth hour of her shift, people start arriving and her tasks become desk-bound, with phone calls and greeting people before they head into the boss’ office. Her life is consumed by work that seems incapable of generating satisfaction or joy. Even the minimal pleasure one can take from food is denied her, as we only see her eat microwave cuisine and sad diner muffins.
Perhaps this is simply entry-level requirements in a century-old industry, and the grind will give way to greater accomplishment. That possibility is dangled in front of her by her boss and others in the office, but it becomes clear the kind of complicity such climbing will require. If she plays maid and den mother to the demanding and childish men who purport to be her colleagues, perhaps she’ll become an assistant producer, at which point her main task will be procurement of new bodies to send into her boss’ lair, represented by stacks of head shots. Maybe the direct complicity ends at the next step after that, but how much can one put up with? There’s lip service paid to a more gender-equitable industry and how she can help make that happen, but how earth-shaking would the women who rise up in this world really be? Wouldn’t they just recapitulate this hazing onto the next generation, to say nothing of the cruel and predatory nature of this specific producer?
Green is bludgeoning the viewer with Jane’s passive tolerance for all this, and if that’s all The Assistant was, it wouldn’t be much more than an exercise in misery porn. Eventually, she does do what she believes to be the right thing and seeks out that upholder of behavioral norms and ethics, the Human Resources department. In a long and claustrophobic back-and-forth between Jane and Wilcock (Matthew McFadyen), Green composes and captures a stunning depiction of the extensive layers of insulation that predators construct for themselves. In fact, Wilcock doesn’t represent the interests or the safety of the employees of the company, but the boss’. He shreds Jane’s concerns through a combination of interrogation and condescension and, to protect himself, he offers to write up her complaint anyway while adding how detrimental that will be to her and inconsequential it will be for her boss. The end result is to give the exact dimensions of the cage that Jane has found herself in, and how many people would gladly make sure she stays locked inside it.
While The Assistant isn’t explicitly about Harvey Weinstein, it’s easy to imagine Green pulling details from the several books written about his conduct, exposure, and trial. The world of the film is too gray to allow for potted plants, but specific reenactments are unnecessary if Green is more desirous of communicating what it would be like to work for someone like him. Garner’s hair is styled in such a way that it looks a quarter turn too tight, and that same feeling is transmuted into the viewer. Jane’s desk is set up so her back is to her boss’ door, and the low-grade horror that he might come out of it at any moment is intolerable for the film’s 87 minute runtime, let alone a full 14-hour workday. The Assistant isn’t a fun watch or even a film that held full attention during its brief length, but it is one that has lingered in the time since watching it. The world has no doubt moved on to several new front-page issues, and Green’s film feels like a period on the end of this particular sentence. That sentence could be the final one, where workplace practices root out harassment and exploitation by the powerful, or, more likely, it will merely be back-burnered until another spasm of high-profile exposures arise once everyone forgets about MeToo and gets comfortable in their institutionalized misogyny again. B
Perhaps this is simply entry-level requirements in a century-old industry, and the grind will give way to greater accomplishment. That possibility is dangled in front of her by her boss and others in the office, but it becomes clear the kind of complicity such climbing will require. If she plays maid and den mother to the demanding and childish men who purport to be her colleagues, perhaps she’ll become an assistant producer, at which point her main task will be procurement of new bodies to send into her boss’ lair, represented by stacks of head shots. Maybe the direct complicity ends at the next step after that, but how much can one put up with? There’s lip service paid to a more gender-equitable industry and how she can help make that happen, but how earth-shaking would the women who rise up in this world really be? Wouldn’t they just recapitulate this hazing onto the next generation, to say nothing of the cruel and predatory nature of this specific producer?
Green is bludgeoning the viewer with Jane’s passive tolerance for all this, and if that’s all The Assistant was, it wouldn’t be much more than an exercise in misery porn. Eventually, she does do what she believes to be the right thing and seeks out that upholder of behavioral norms and ethics, the Human Resources department. In a long and claustrophobic back-and-forth between Jane and Wilcock (Matthew McFadyen), Green composes and captures a stunning depiction of the extensive layers of insulation that predators construct for themselves. In fact, Wilcock doesn’t represent the interests or the safety of the employees of the company, but the boss’. He shreds Jane’s concerns through a combination of interrogation and condescension and, to protect himself, he offers to write up her complaint anyway while adding how detrimental that will be to her and inconsequential it will be for her boss. The end result is to give the exact dimensions of the cage that Jane has found herself in, and how many people would gladly make sure she stays locked inside it.
While The Assistant isn’t explicitly about Harvey Weinstein, it’s easy to imagine Green pulling details from the several books written about his conduct, exposure, and trial. The world of the film is too gray to allow for potted plants, but specific reenactments are unnecessary if Green is more desirous of communicating what it would be like to work for someone like him. Garner’s hair is styled in such a way that it looks a quarter turn too tight, and that same feeling is transmuted into the viewer. Jane’s desk is set up so her back is to her boss’ door, and the low-grade horror that he might come out of it at any moment is intolerable for the film’s 87 minute runtime, let alone a full 14-hour workday. The Assistant isn’t a fun watch or even a film that held full attention during its brief length, but it is one that has lingered in the time since watching it. The world has no doubt moved on to several new front-page issues, and Green’s film feels like a period on the end of this particular sentence. That sentence could be the final one, where workplace practices root out harassment and exploitation by the powerful, or, more likely, it will merely be back-burnered until another spasm of high-profile exposures arise once everyone forgets about MeToo and gets comfortable in their institutionalized misogyny again. B
RSS Feed