‘The Assistant’ powerful, but difficult to watch
Writer and director Kitty Green never reveals the name of the villain in “The Assistant,” or shows his face.
We hear his voice only in muffled, seething tones on the telephone, or through his office door. There is no big reveal of his identity, because there doesn’t need to be: He’s Harvey Weinstein.
Not literally, of course. The real Weinstein, the once-powerful Hollywood producer accused of serial sexual misconduct and abuse, is standing trial on rape charges.
The film version represents a version of a Weinstein-like character, but not just him — this loathsome creature
stands in for all of the powerful men whose behavior was finally exposed in the #MeToo movement. Green’s film, which is really good but hard to watch for a couple of reasons — it’s slow and it’s difficult — offers a look at what a
day spent steeped in that toxic environment is like, and how hard it is to escape.
Julia Garner, an Emmy winner for “Ozark,” is fantastic as Jane, the assistant of the title. She’s one of three assistants working for the unseen producer, whose power over the entire New York film-production company he leads is absolute. But the way her male office mates (Noah Robbins and Jon Orsini) treat her, it’s clear she’s on the low rung in terms of office power.
Jane makes copies. She cleans, despite the office having a janitorial service. But she cleans … differently, like she’s getting rid of evidence — wearing gloves to clean stains off the boss’s couch, or picking up an errant earring left on his office floor. She washes dishes, schedules cars, takes angry phone calls from the boss’s wife.
The day starts early, with a car picking her up before the sun rises. She’ll work long after it sets. She asks her coworkers how their weekend was. When they ask her, she says, “I was here.” Jane wants to be a producer, so she’s willing to do the scut work, despite graduating from Northwestern with honors.
Gradually, hour by hour — minute by minute, really — Green shows us what Jane and the other employees endure over the course of just this single day. But it’s an atmosphere built upon a much longer period of abusive behavior.
A young woman shows up, unannounced, saying she’s the new hire. Despite the surprise, Jane and the others know the drill. Jane accompanies her on a car ride to the lavish hotel where she will be staying, and the boss will be visiting. Does she have experience in movies, Jane asks? Her uncle ran craft services on a movie set in Denver one time.
After Jane handles a call from the boss’s wife, he calls, livid, damning Jane, blaming her, belittling her. When he hangs up Jane immediately begins typing an email of apology; her co-workers join in to help, their first genuine interaction with her of the day. This, we will learn, is standard operating procedure.
Another young woman shows up, an actress. She has a meeting with the boss. Once she’s inside the office, where she remains for a long time, Jane asks another co-worker who she is. “Her? A waste of my time.”
Eventually Jane visits the human-resources department, meeting with a representative (a scarily good Matthew Macfadyen of “Succession”) who is initially understanding. But the poisonous work climate is too pervasive, too contagious. When he dismisses her with an oblivious-yet-chilling, “You don’t have anything to worry about, you’re not his type,” you realize how deeply committed the entire operation is to enabling this kind of behavior.
The look of the film is drab, depressing. There is almost no music or ambient sound — it’s mostly natural sound, which means the mundane things you hear in an office. It moves at a patient pace, to put it charitably. Little things take on greater meaning that way — so when Macfadyen’s HR representative slides a box of tissues across his desk toward her, it’s practically an act of violence.
Garner beautifully portrays a woman who has not quite gotten used to the indignities heaped upon her, but who realizes the spiral she’s trapped in. She says little, so we see it in her eyes, in her gestures. She’s nearly invisible to everyone but us. It’s not that everyone ignores her — that requires action. It’s that they don’t even see her at all. That’s worse.
Green shows us nothing lurid, nothing explicit. Instead she lets the toxicity build, bit by bit, until it’s seeped in everywhere. That’s powerful, and that’s worse, too.