Film Review — "The Assistant"
I can attest. Being an office assistant in the film production world sucks. Sure, as a learning experience with plenty of chances to network, it has its upsides—and it could theoretically lead to better opportunities (more on that later). But, for the most part, the gig is pretty thankless, super tedious, and oftentimes very shitty. Now, I’m a man, so naturally my time doing the job was not exactly like Jane’s, the protagonist of The Assistant. However, I’ve been in this realm, in multiple capacities, for more than half a decade at this point. Therefore, I do not doubt for one second the serious and very real issue at the core of this movie: men leveraging their clout to commit sexual harassment and rape, then garnering complicity through gatekeeping.
The Assistant might not resemble what the general consensus considers horror—and perhaps writer-director Kitty Green did not specifically set out to make a horror film—but genre is fluid, and this movie’s impact cannot be denied. Green tells this horror story tautly and with a consistent attention to authenticity. It made my skin crawl. It made me squirm. And it made me relive unpleasant memories.
Plus, once again drawing upon my own life, there’s something truly hellish about the landscape of this setting, visually speaking. Few places are as suffocating and devoid of flavor as office spaces. The art direction of John Arnos and the set decoration of Dani Broom-Peltz are spot-on and appropriately soul-draining. Their efforts marry one another so well. And all their work is enhanced by a deceptively ominous lighting design from cinematographer Michael Latham. Offices are rife with unflattering fluorescent lamps—glass tubes of gaseous discharge that emit a gross short-wave ultraviolet light once an electrical current links the electrodes at each end—and they don’t do anyone any favors. The science is as nerdy as the light is ugly. And Latham wisely leans into the dreadful type of illumination native to such workplaces, while still managing to sculpt the frame with shadows both subtle and foreboding that underline the menace of the setting, the threat it poses to the mind and body…
From the moment we meet her, it’s inferable that Jane is in the process of slowly succumbing to the inherent inhumanity of her chosen field. Julia Garner, already an Emmy Award-winner for Ozark, further proves here that she’s a star on the rise. Her character Jane has had her job for just over five weeks, and her exhaustion is palpable. The hours leave little to no room for a social life. Or a life at all. As the first one in and the last one out, you’re looking at 12+ hour days, at least five days a week. My longest day as an assistant was 21 hours (I’m not kidding), and my longest streak without a day off was 19 days. And the pay is usually horseshit. In many cases, assistants do not have an hourly wage but rather a day rate (also known as a flat rate), meaning you get paid the same amount of money every day regardless of how many hours you’re on the clock, whether it be 8 or 12 or 18. Also, in these cases, overtime is nonexistent, since the job is non-hourly. So bosses have zero incentive to make the most of your time and send you home. Because since their budget is essentially unaffected by how long they keep you, they can just… keep you around, whether there’s anything to be done or not, until you have their blessing to leave. It’s monstrous and exploitative and ought to be illegal. Production moguls do it because they know they can get away with it, because they know that the young people working for them are trying to break in and will do whatever it takes to get one step closer to doing what they actually want to be doing. And with that subservience comes a reluctance to speak out or rock the boat in any way.
For so many, the allure of landing that dream gig someday is so strong that they’ll grant those with the connections to make it happen the chance to rob them of their autonomy. It’s abuse of power, plain and simple. And unfortunately abusers are not uncommon in the film industry; I’ve received my share of verbal and emotional attacks, certainly. Thankfully, I’ve never been subjected to sexual mistreatment by a superior. Here in The Assistant, though, a horrible bigheaded man capitalizes upon his level of influence to coerce sexual gratification at the expense of someone with no power or resources. As Jane, a young woman caught well within the radius of a #MeToo scenario, Julia Garner is riveting. Jane is a bit of a detective, gathering circumstantial evidence and using her intuition to get to the bottom of what she fears may be the newest case in an ongoing thread of serial rapes, enabled and/or ignored by nearly everyone else around her. The film tells its story in a low-key, almost discreet manner, and Garner matches her director’s approach beat for beat. Garner’s commanding performance is so understated yet so specific that you will undoubtedly miss something every time you blink. What’s so brilliant about her acting—and this extends to Green’s direction—is how unassuming it is. There is an absolute confidence to this style of storytelling.
Told in about 85 minutes and set over the course of a single excruciating day in the life of a studio office subordinate, Kitty Green’s The Assistant succinctly captures the toxic culture of silence that permeates our society—and one industry in particular. It’s a richly complex film that dares to be methodically minimalistic. Some may find Green’s steadily simmering pace frustrating—or, dare I say, boring—but I find that the deliberate tempo and the static framing render the film all the more gripping. And Julia Garner, theydies and gentlethems, Julia goddamn Garner. What a portrayal, whose final moments on screen are really chilling.
And, yes, I stand by my claim that this film lives is on the horror spectrum. Because, here’s a thought, The Assistant is a monster movie.
