The Assistant | Little White Lies

The Assis­tant

28 Apr 2020 / Released: 01 May 2020

A young woman with curly hair speaking on a telephone, wearing a pink jumper, set against a blurred background.
A young woman with curly hair speaking on a telephone, wearing a pink jumper, set against a blurred background.
4

Anticipation.

Casting JonBenet was a gruelling but fascinating watch.

4

Enjoyment.

A simple premise, masterfully executed.

4

In Retrospect.

Required viewing for every person in a job with an in-built power structure.

Direc­tor Kit­ty Green high­lights the sys­temic abuse women suf­fer in the work­place in this pow­er­ful drama.

From the jurors attempt­ing to decide a mat­ter of life and death in 12 Angry Men to the Brook­lynite ten­sions reach­ing fever pitch in Do the Right Thing, many notable films set with­in a 24-hour peri­od seek to show the audi­ence what a dif­fer­ence a day makes. Deals are done, the die is cast, lives are irrev­o­ca­bly changed, and the frag­ile, fleet­ing nature of human mor­tal­i­ty comes to the forefront.

In Kit­ty Green’s The Assis­tant, the same struc­ture is employed, but for the pur­pos­es of high­light­ing the monot­o­ny of the title character’s role, as well as the immense pres­sure placed on some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with­in the enter­tain­ment industry.

Jane (Julia Gar­ner) is a young col­lege grad­u­ate with aspi­ra­tions of being a film pro­duc­er. She is a few months into a gru­elling job as an assis­tant for a stu­dio chair­man in New York City. Her day begins before every­one else’s, and ends long after they’re gone. She orders cof­fees and lunch­es, pre­pares pro­tein shakes, plans trav­el itin­er­aries and tends to all the minu­ti­ae with which so-called impor­tant peo­ple nev­er have to trou­ble themselves.

She appears large­ly invis­i­ble to more senior employ­ees, who only speak to her when they want some­thing or have rea­son to rep­ri­mand her. Her boss, mean­while, is a shad­owy spec­tre who barks orders and insults down the phone. He’s an obvi­ous stand-in for Har­vey Wein­stein, but it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter – he could be any num­ber of men at the top of the enter­tain­ment food chain.

Two people working at a desk with a computer and bookshelves in the background.

Over the course of the day, Jane encoun­ters a new assis­tant named Ruby (Maken­zie Leigh) and becomes con­cerned her boss is abus­ing his posi­tion of pow­er. She’s all but laughed out of the room by a human resources man­ag­er (Matthew Mac­fadyen on top smarmy form) who kind­ly informs Jane she per­son­al­ly has noth­ing to wor­ry about, as you’re not his type.” A defeat­ed Jane qui­et­ly returns to her desk and her uncon­cerned male colleagues.

By now we know that the #MeToo move­ment hasn’t solved the deep-root­ed prob­lems of sex­u­al abuse and coer­cion with­in the enter­tain­ment indus­try, but it has shone a light on them. The Assis­tant is a fit­ting­ly aus­tere, uncom­fort­able film, mak­ing use of a drea­ry, mut­ed colour palette and office-based white noise rather than music in order to under­score Jane’s iso­la­tion, but also the way women are forced to throw them­selves into their work to pre­vent think­ing about the dark­er issues which plague the industry.

Per­haps the most grotesque ele­ment is how painful­ly true it all is. Jane is reward­ed with tid­bits of praise, told that she’s being mis­treat­ed in the name of mak­ing her bet­ter at her job. Gar­ner smiles gen­tly, acts duti­ful­ly, though all the while there’s a sense she might break at any moment. There are thou­sands of girls just like her work­ing across the enter­tain­ment indus­try, and even more who were forced out by the actions of men who should have known better.

Even in their appar­ent insignif­i­cance, the 24 hours depict­ed in The Assis­tant are qui­et­ly rad­i­cal. Green’s stripped back, stark approach gives the view­er and the sto­ry nowhere to hide – we’re with Jane every step of the way, acute­ly aware of how all-con­sum­ing her job is. It’s a bit­ter reminder of how insid­i­ous the abuse of pow­er is with­in the film indus­try, and instead of naive­ly sug­gest­ing there are any easy fix­es, Green invites us to con­tin­ue the conversation.

You might like