Saturday, March 07, 2020

The Assistant: A film review and summary


 You may have to find this film on Netflix or a streaming service now. Even though it did have an Oscar nomination, it was only playing at The Loft (Tucson’s art film house ) when we saw it. 

One of the sleeper films of 2019 was The Assistant directed with astringent distance by Kitty Green.  It is a cold and melancholy look at a day in the life of a newly minted college graduate who has been hired to look after the affairs of a New York media mogul with a voracious roving eye. If you see a Harvey Weinstein clone here, I would not be surprised.    

The film opens in early morning darkness as a car waits to pick up the young woman and drive her to a small, sterile, cubicle laden office. Leading actress Julia Garner, accompanied by lots of office and elevator sounds but almost no dialogue, turns on the lights, starts the coffee, begins fielding phone calls (some from the mogul’s wife wondering where the hell he is), picks up, straightens, and gets the copy machine purring.  Her job and the job of the others in the office appears to consist of covering up for the sexual predator who occupies the large  corner office. As the day passes muttering anonymous groups of “suits” pass through the frame. They are always on their way somewhere, but never interact with the peons. Other employees live glued to screens in their tiny cubicles.    

Garner’s plays Jane--the only person in the film with a name.  Though a Northwestern graduate and a survivor of two preceding internships (one paid), she is really just a  “dogsbody” for all.  She has to mollify the bosses’ wife, fix the copier, distribute lunches to everyone, wash the dishes, and pick up the trash (including the bosses’ hypodermic needles).  We never actually see this predator’s face, but we know this man. He is a walking moral abyss and his legion of enablers are no better.    

Garner is all interior. She floats, zombie like, through this environment with eyes resigned in acceptance. After lunch Jane is tasked with taking a naïve young waitress from Idaho to a fancy hotel. The boss has apparently met her during a skiing trip to Sun Valley, flown her across the country, put her up in the hotel, and given her a job at the company.  To add insult to injury Jane is also told that she will be responsible for training the new girl.  This pushes her to head for the Human Resources office to at least talk about the boss’s actions. The HR office is symbolically located in an even more cramped space in a building across the way.  The heartbreaking scene with the HR guy that follows is so painful that it is hard to look at the screen.   

The day ends. Darkness descends. The employees straggle out.  Garner (Jane) stays behind to clean up the trash and put out the lights while the boss lingers in his office with another woman.  She leaves alone and enters a corner eatery that comes right out of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks’ painting.  She sits at one of those counters that face the windows in that kind of place, nibbles on a muffin, and gazes out at a window in her office building.  Finally she walks out and disappears down the sidewalk. She gets no company car at night to take her home. 

Cue sad, deep cello music, a blank screen, and the credits. The system of workplace oppression remains intact and waiting for the next day and its next victim

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