The Soul-Killing Void
Some workers are insignificant, replaceable drones—as in the silent film The Crowd, which pans up a skyscraper and into an office where the desks of worker bees stretch to infinity, and in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which returned to that image decades later. Drudgery would get weirder over the years, manifesting in the light-flickering horrors of the Staten Island factory in Joe Versus the Volcano and the absurd “floor 7½” of Being John Malkovich. And a truly dark side to menial tasks is the focus of The Assistant, which is loosely based on Harvey Weinstein’s abusive work environment.