The Assistant coolly dissects Weinstein scandal

By Katherine Monk

You have to congratulate Kitty Green for making The Assistant. Even if it doesn’t quite work. We need this story to be out there in the ether, because the celebrity-riddled salaciousness of the Harvey Weinstein scandal is one thing. But the daily reality of working in an office plagued by sexual harassment is something else entirely. So credit to Kitty Green for giving us a gutsy little portrait of one powerless peon trying to navigate the icebergs of her boss’s indiscretions.

Julia Garner plays Jane, a 20-something office assistant working in New York City at a large entertainment company. She knows she should feel grateful to be working there. She’s even advised to articulate her gratitude at regular intervals — thanks to her male colleagues, who enforce her low status by keeping her out of their conversations, and reassigning her work station.

She has no power. Yet, her responsibilities are significant as she books every meeting, workout, plane, train and automobile for the boss and his entourage. The logistics are staggering, but to those around her, she’s there to quietly clean up snack table, and wipe the boss’s bodily fluids from the couch. All of which she does without complaint or hiccup.

She’s the ideal Gal Friday. Except Jane has a brain of her own, and though all we really see are long, relatively static shots of her eating a sandwich or making multiple collated copies, we begin to sense her discomfort as she starts digesting the truth of what’s happening around her.

We never see her boss. We only hear the occasional loud bellow from behind a closed door. He sounds like Harvey Weinstein, so we can certainly take this as a story inspired by the onetime Miramax mogul’s downfall. Filmmaker Kitty Green makes no bones about it. The whole film took shape while she was researching sex crimes on campuses, then the Weinstein scandal broke and gave her a real world focus. Green started researching the stories of the alleged victims, and pieced together a world where fear was an ambient force, and the powerful worked hard to be seen as omnipotent.

She’s the ideal Gal Friday. Except Jane has a brain of her own, and though all we really see are long, relatively static shots of her eating a sandwich or making multiple collated copies, we begin to sense her discomfort as she starts digesting the truth of what’s happening around her.

She translates it through a colour palette that can only be described as severely anemic, if not entirely moribund. Nauseous greens and ashen greys, the colours that flash upon the skin before you pass out, or vomit. Or both.

It’s so drab and lacking in definition, it dulls the senses and drains the suspense. On the other hand, it communicates a sense of living underwater — and slowly running out of air. Also, the decision to use largely natural light means the whole movie feels post-apocalyptic. Lights make the world feel civilized. So, if this was an artistic decision to take us back to the cave — it worked.

…The colour palette that can only be described as severely anemic, if not entirely moribund. Nauseous greens and ashen greys, the colours that flash upon the skin before you pass out, or vomit. Or both. It’s so drab and lacking in definition, it dulls the senses and drains the suspense. On the other hand, it communicates a sense of living underwater — and slowly running out of air.

After all, that’s sort of where Jane finds herself. When she starts seeing the truth, she’s faced with a tough decision about whether to speak up, or stay quiet while her boss stealthily preys on those around her. Because she’s not a direct victim, and is only a bystander with suspicions, we, too, wonder what the right course of action should be.
She obeys her moral conscience and visits the corporate lawyer in Human Resources. Brilliantly played by Matthew Macfadyen, the lawyer smiles, consoles, and slowly bullies her out of what she believes.

At this point, we can give up on the moment of magical redemption. This is not Working Girl. It’s the story behind movies like Working Girl, where the women who work to keep it all together are called Girl Fridays and gone by Saturday.

Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men laid out the same landscape, only framed by a male gaze. Labute’s movie was punctuated by cruelty. Green’s movie is barely punctuated at all, because it’s steeped in personal doubt.

Garner’s Jane captures a lack of confidence and self-esteem that makes young women particularly vulnerable to systemic pressures to conform, stay quiet, and maintain the status quo. Her insecurity makes her a tough heroine to identify with because she can’t really take action, and the actions she does perform are menial, forgettable, and largely invisible.

Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men laid out the same landscape, only framed by a male gaze. Labute’s movie was punctuated by cruelty. Green’s movie is barely punctuated at all, because it’s steeped in personal doubt.

Moreover, she’s so consumed by the job and the desire for professional affirmation, she’s unable to step back. Honestly, she seems a tad unstable and a little melodramatic. Right?

Actually, wrong. And therein lies the beauty of Garner’s performance, and the whole point of Green’s film: The environment is toxic. It makes people sick. We prefer to blame the individual who can’t cope, than question the way things are. In fact, the most potent scenes in the film are the quiet moments where female executives huddle in the kitchenette, whispering their awareness, yet too wary of the bully in the boardroom to make a peep.

Everyone else thinks they’ve built up an immunity to the pathogen by simply surviving with their power intact. Jane, however, has no antibodies. She’s feeling it all, waving the red flags, and willing to do the hardest thing — despite her obvious weakness. She does the heroic thing.

Honestly, she seems a tad unstable and a little melodramatic. Right?… Actually, wrong. And therein lies the beauty of Garner’s performance, and the whole point of Green’s film: The environment is toxic. It makes people sick. We prefer to blame the individual who can’t cope, than question the way things are.

Yet, the film deprives us of catharsis or reward, which makes it all feel pointless. That, unfortunately, is the result of our well-honed expectations created by none other than the Hollywood moguls denuded in this very non-Hollywood film.

The Assistant is not a feel-good movie. It’s not even a rage-inspiring indictment of systemic sexism. It’s an ode to millennial depression, brought on by the ambient pathogen of denial, and the collective will to keep swimming in an effluent of lies. Its refusal to amuse us, or even offer a central character with definitive lines and moments, is a statement in itself. Sadly, like Jane, it’s one we don’t want to hear — and won’t feel compelled to listen to — for the very reason that it doesn’t conform.

The Assistant is not a feel-good movie. It’s not even a rage-inspiring indictment of systemic sexism. It’s an ode to millennial depression, brought on by the ambient pathogen of denial, and the collective will to keep swimming in an effluent of lies…

So truly, I’d love to give this movie five stars. It forced me to think. And clearly, after a lot of thought, it succeeded at what it had to do. Yet, I can’t say I enjoyed a single moment — or a single character. The movie was lifeless. And yet, the more I articulate its flaws, the more I have to acknowledge how much truth it’s reflecting through the glass, darkly.

@katherinemonk

Main image (Above): Julia Garner stars as Jane in Kitty Green’s The Assistant. Courtesy of Bleeker Street.

THE EX-PRESS, February 14, 2020

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