The Assistant - Review

The Assistant 

“The Assistant” is an American drama film written and directed by Kitty Green and starring Julia Garner (NETFLIX “Ozark”), Matthew Macfadyen, Kristine Froseth, Makenzie Leigh, Noah Robbins, Dagmara Domińczyk and Purva Bedi. It had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019. It was released on January 31, 2020, by Bleecker Street.

Fictionally somewhere outside of NYC, we see actress Garner playing a bright highly accomplished Northwestern University recent graduate named “Jane”. She’s an aspiring film producer and has just landed her dream job as a junior assistant to a powerful entertainment movie mogul who coincidentally in the film you never see; not even a passing glance of. But on numerous occasions throughout the film you do hear his foreboding voice on the phone and see his dictatorial emails to “Jane”.

Still, “Jane” knows she is clearly lucky to having such a highly coveted prized entry level job in this prestigious studio, even though the fast majority of her very long dark to dark day besides getting up to go to work and heading home is spent much like any other assistant in America………..making coffee, ordering lunches, arranging travel accommodations, taking phone messages and deflecting phone calls for the male employees aka “lying” as to where they really are. But as routine as her daily duties have absolutely nothing to do with making films she begins to grow increasingly aware and weary of the abuse she sees and experiences first hand that begins to insidiously and negatively color every aspect of her workday and her goals in life. The day after day accumulation of male chauvinistic degradations directed at her as well as their surreptitious and stealthy improprieties they take with new aspiring albeit naïve female actresses forces “Jane” to possibly consider taking a stand that could cost her dearly.

REVIEW: “The Assistant” at its core is largely a quiet, patient and deliberate film, but overall is an adroitly unsettling to film watch also. Minimalistically shot with almost 90 percent on the entire film visually shot in “Jane’s reception work area it masterfully captures the duality of what inwardly is a normal happy, lovely and healthy person enduring a day after day toxic environment of brazen emotional vulgarity and abuse. I emphasize the word “emotional” in that there was very little in the way of actual verbal profanity in the film, but it still manages nevertheless to feel and seem to be filled vulgarity when it comes to moral decency, especially when it comes to men and their relationship with women. More so we sense vulgarity as we watch “Jane” feeling totally trapped by her wearing her angst and anxiety on her face and in her eyes all the while projecting a professional attitude even though at times she is no more respected than someone telling the family pet…………..”Go fetch the ball”.

I loved films that seem on the surface to be small but in the end delivers a much bigger message to embrace and “The Assistant” is just such a film. It’s a story executed as a subtle observational narrative which moves from the work place mundane to unexpected moments that are eerie, icy and creepy. Overall during its 97 minutes it shows what it feels like to live with, to endure and even survive to the minute a predator in the work place. It’s also examines male indifference and misguided instincts to just look away or  to offer up some dumfounded principled excuse and belief that male predatory actions in the work place is just a normal  part of the American work experience. ITS NOT.

It’s abundantly clear that this is a Harvey Weinstein-inspired drama, but its Julia Garner's work here that gives the film its big heart beat, its tenderness, its fear and its clarity of morality and decency without a shred of a political agenda. And while “The Assistant” offers nothing in the way of a solution nor takes any principled stand as to what to do, it still effectively captures very insightfully the mood and devastation of "screaming in silence" looks like and in the end how that silence is complicit to the atrocities exclusively directed far too often to way too many women in the work place everywhere.

3.50 Stars