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
No comments:
Post a Comment