The Assistant (2020)

By: Mike Ward on Friday, February 14

R Running Time: 87 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • A much buzzed about film, dating back to the Telluride Film Festival in August 2019, The Assistant is a topical, of-the-moment movie inspired by details learned from the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

  • Julia Garner gives the first great leading performance of 2020.

  • For some, the quiet, observational focus in following Garner’s character for one long day will be intriguing and insightful.

NO

  • For some, the quiet, observational focus in following Garner’s character for one long day will be mundane and boring.

  • Though it does not specifically call out the more abhorrent activities of Harvey Weinstein, there should be a warning that some scenes depicting verbal abuse and mistreatment of co-workers might prove triggering.

  • The trailer is a misrepresentation of the movie audiences are going to get. This is a quiet, contemplative drama, shot by an independent filmmaker, Kitty Green, with an independent vision for her story. Anyone thinking this will be “The Harvey Weinstein Story” or largely crafted from those events - you will be sadly mistaken.


OUR REVIEW

Far different than what audiences may be anticipating, Kitty Green’s workmanlike film, The Assistant, has been heralded as a workplace domestic drama, arriving in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I’m not sure that’s completely accurate, even if, as a female production assistant for a bustling New York City film studio, our main character must find ways to work around her boss’ affairs, abusive behavior, and marginalization and reductive treatment of his staff, clients, and colleagues.

Julia Garner stars as an unnamed assistant, who is just a few weeks into her job. Working with two longer-tenured assistants (Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins), they exist in something of a shared, but parallel world. One guy takes call after call on his headset, the other works on what appears to be the most complicated spreadsheet ever created. But Garner’s character handles virtually everything else.

She books travel, arranges car service, opens the mail, grabs water and glasses for meetings, orders and distributes lunch, informs a co-worker that he must cancel all his plans and go to Los Angeles that evening, and on and on. Purposefully unnamed, though the credits identify her as “Jane,” Green’s film takes a documentarian’s eye to the cramped and suffocating culture slowly enveloping Jane on one specific day.

We never really see the boss, but the effects of his behavior hang heavy over everyone. Though he takes calls constantly, the man with the headset refuses to talk to the boss’ wife who keeps calling, passing her off to Jane and getting her attention by throwing crunched up paper balls at her head. Other microaggressions occur and over the course of the day in question, it is implied that people know a whole lot more than they are letting on.

Green’s film is very studious and observant, again drawing on her history as a documentary filmmaker. For some, and at times for me, The Assistant dwells on minutiae a bit too much. There are only so many dishes to wash, letters to open, and scripts to distribute before the film begins to grind to a halt. Also distracting in quieter moments, the film’s sound design which feels mixed too loud, making normal sounds seem far louder than they should be as tasks are accomplished around the office.

For some, The Assistant will be dreadfully boring. Others will appreciate the in-the-moment pace and style Green opts to go with. Green succeeds in showing us the ease with which people can settle into everyday tasks and ignore the obviousness of what is happening around them.

Is this from a survival mechanism kicking in? A willful ignorance? Fear? The Assistant makes the case that a culture exists where the silence has made the inequities grow like a mold. And once those foundations are in place, it becomes nearly impossible to eradicate the toxicity of what is all around you.

Garner gives the first great leading performance of 2020, balancing the emotional heft of getting through the day, while she begins to recognize just how bad things around her may be.

Quiet in tone, but a challenging and complex film to contemplate and consider, The Assistant may opt to say a lot by saying relatively little at all. Which begs the question: Is that enough?

CAST & CREW

Starring: Julia Garner, Matthew Mcfayden, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Forseth, Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins, Stéphanye Dussud, Juliana Canfield, Dagmara Dominczyk, Alexander Chaplin, Purva Bedi.

Director: Kitty Green
Written by: Kitty Green
Release Date: January 31, 2020
Bleecker Street