"The Assistant" is a splendid film which has no car chase, explosions or even a plot with a problem which demands an onscreen solution.
In his inept review in "Variety" Peter Debruge offered all sorts of ways the movie could have been improved, which would have made it more conventional: Give the protagonist an impossible mission from her venal boss and watch her go after that, which would give the flick a beginning, middle and end.
Of course, the would be film auteur, Mr. Debruge, entirely missed the point.
This is a film in which, as I heard my fellow theater goers say on the way out, nothing much happened.
They, too, missed it.
Quite a lot happens, but it happens in the mind of Jane, the assistant, a just out of college, 20 something, who hopes to someday be a movie producer, but is starting with an entry level job, for which the ultimate in smarmy HR man tells her he has 400 applicants just salivating to get her position.
The movie is, of course, about Harvey Weinstein, or someone like him, and is an ode to #METOO , which, ordinarily, would have putt me off from even attending, as I have recoiled against the essence of #METOO, which is accusation without process, accusation equals conviction, which says simply, "Believe the Woman."
But something else happens here. Jane is not the victim of her boss, who is never shown on screen, not in any direct way. He does not throw her on the casting couch and tear off her clothes. She, in fact, is tasked with disinfecting the couch, with scrubbing out semen stains the next morning, with delivering to one of that couch's beautiful women a valuable earring she left behind.
The problem, never stated, is with Jane's sense of visceral sense of morality. She is like the cook at the concentration camp, who prepares meals for the guards and the commandant's family, but who never pulls a trigger or even actually sees the gas chambers--she simply sees the trucks rolling in with the gas containers and the smoke going up from the chimneys.
Which is not to say the rapacious boss here is on any level committing crimes as awful as mass murder. His crimes are pretty tame stuff compared to those of the Final Solution. But he does share that one trait: he is doing something which requires complicity from those who work for him, a staff of dozens who all look the other way.
It's more like that scene from "The Young Lions" where a young American tourist, a woman on vacation in the German alps, traveling alone, has dinner and beers in a picturesque inn, and goes up to bed, where she finds a villager, a young swain, has climbed into her bed, expecting her to engage, and all she can think about is all those rosy cheeked villagers downstairs, knowing he has climbed up those stairs to rape her, or to get his satisfaction, depending on how it's presented.
The pervasive complicity.
Complicity is not always presented in such stark terms. Anyone who ever read "Once Upon A Secret" Mimi Alford's memoir of her "affair" with John F. Kennedy, will know this.
"Affair" is not quite the right word, as Alford relates it. JFK spotted her among a tour of college kids at the White House and sent for her later. JFK never kissed her. He gave her a private "tour" of the residential part of the White House, when Jackie was away, and while his pals drank cocktails, guarding the entry, he led her to a canopied bed, and pressed her against it and had sex with her. For months thereafter, he sent a Presidential airplane to pick her up from Wheaton College and whisked her off to the White House. She was her girl toy, clearly, but to her he was Lancelot.
Significantly, in "The Assistant" the one fully explicated statement of case comes from the HR man, who is all mellifluous voice, sympathy, warmth, oily compassion. He asks Jane what she actually knows, what she has witnessed, the very questions which would be asked in court.
And the fact is, she has seen the woman go into the room with casting couch, but she has never actually seen what happens there. She has taken the ingenue from Idaho, a girl/woman the boss has met when she waitressed his table and then he invited her to New York City, for a job in the big time. She has been, "in film" she tells Jane because her father served food to the film crew in Boise, when they were on location, and then the big man picked her out and flew her to New York, and she is headed to the hotel, where the big man will meet her for an assignation and the next day she'll start as another one of his "assistants" in the outer office. She signs contracts with, one can imagine, lots of non disclosure clauses.
The looks of this girl/woman are perfect. As Jane says, "She's just so young!" But the HR guy says, she's old enough. She's an adult. Well, technically, but she is said to be from Idaho for a reason. If you're from Idaho, you are ipso facto, unsophisticated.
But she is not so unsophisticated she is unaware she is trading sex for advancement. That much is clear the next day when she shows up at the office.
We see only four women who have made that bargain during the movie, and the other three are clearly old enough to know what they are doing.
So we have willing, consensual adults. In a canny casting feat, the first woman we see is a woman who radiates sexual sophistication. She awaits her appointment with a knowing, professional expression. She is there to do business.
Then there is the ingenue waif from Idaho, who has just found out what it really means to be given a "job" in the organization. She may seem a little dazed after her bedtime experience with the big man, but she is still game.
And the last is somewhere in between, a woman, not a girl, but still, in her video, you see someone who is half way in between the other two.
But for Jane, it just all feels wrong. It is a promise of sex for stardom, but the stardom will never happen.
One woman, a woman higher up in management, remarks to Jane in an elevator, "She'll get more out of him than he will from her."
But you know that's just what that woman tells herself to be able to sleep better. It is, in fact, what every woman must believe as she heads toward that casting couch.
A lot depends on our perception, which is shaped in a significant measure, by how people look. The Idaho ingenue just looks so fresh and unspoiled. With the simple visual look of her all we need is her pathetic remark that she's "been in film" to understand how thoroughly out of her element she is. She is a lamb ready for slaughter.
Harvey Weinstein just looks so dissolute. You know none of the women he threw on the casting couch could have had any response to him but revulsion, but they went through with it, because they were ambitious.
"The Assistant" is a film of great discipline and intelligence.
To my mind, the real title is "Complicit."
If you go into it with the idea you are going to learn something, rather than be entertained, you'll come away thinking about it for days.
In his inept review in "Variety" Peter Debruge offered all sorts of ways the movie could have been improved, which would have made it more conventional: Give the protagonist an impossible mission from her venal boss and watch her go after that, which would give the flick a beginning, middle and end.
Of course, the would be film auteur, Mr. Debruge, entirely missed the point.
This is a film in which, as I heard my fellow theater goers say on the way out, nothing much happened.
They, too, missed it.
Quite a lot happens, but it happens in the mind of Jane, the assistant, a just out of college, 20 something, who hopes to someday be a movie producer, but is starting with an entry level job, for which the ultimate in smarmy HR man tells her he has 400 applicants just salivating to get her position.
The movie is, of course, about Harvey Weinstein, or someone like him, and is an ode to #METOO , which, ordinarily, would have putt me off from even attending, as I have recoiled against the essence of #METOO, which is accusation without process, accusation equals conviction, which says simply, "Believe the Woman."
But something else happens here. Jane is not the victim of her boss, who is never shown on screen, not in any direct way. He does not throw her on the casting couch and tear off her clothes. She, in fact, is tasked with disinfecting the couch, with scrubbing out semen stains the next morning, with delivering to one of that couch's beautiful women a valuable earring she left behind.
The problem, never stated, is with Jane's sense of visceral sense of morality. She is like the cook at the concentration camp, who prepares meals for the guards and the commandant's family, but who never pulls a trigger or even actually sees the gas chambers--she simply sees the trucks rolling in with the gas containers and the smoke going up from the chimneys.
Which is not to say the rapacious boss here is on any level committing crimes as awful as mass murder. His crimes are pretty tame stuff compared to those of the Final Solution. But he does share that one trait: he is doing something which requires complicity from those who work for him, a staff of dozens who all look the other way.
It's more like that scene from "The Young Lions" where a young American tourist, a woman on vacation in the German alps, traveling alone, has dinner and beers in a picturesque inn, and goes up to bed, where she finds a villager, a young swain, has climbed into her bed, expecting her to engage, and all she can think about is all those rosy cheeked villagers downstairs, knowing he has climbed up those stairs to rape her, or to get his satisfaction, depending on how it's presented.
The pervasive complicity.
Complicity is not always presented in such stark terms. Anyone who ever read "Once Upon A Secret" Mimi Alford's memoir of her "affair" with John F. Kennedy, will know this.
"Affair" is not quite the right word, as Alford relates it. JFK spotted her among a tour of college kids at the White House and sent for her later. JFK never kissed her. He gave her a private "tour" of the residential part of the White House, when Jackie was away, and while his pals drank cocktails, guarding the entry, he led her to a canopied bed, and pressed her against it and had sex with her. For months thereafter, he sent a Presidential airplane to pick her up from Wheaton College and whisked her off to the White House. She was her girl toy, clearly, but to her he was Lancelot.
Significantly, in "The Assistant" the one fully explicated statement of case comes from the HR man, who is all mellifluous voice, sympathy, warmth, oily compassion. He asks Jane what she actually knows, what she has witnessed, the very questions which would be asked in court.
And the fact is, she has seen the woman go into the room with casting couch, but she has never actually seen what happens there. She has taken the ingenue from Idaho, a girl/woman the boss has met when she waitressed his table and then he invited her to New York City, for a job in the big time. She has been, "in film" she tells Jane because her father served food to the film crew in Boise, when they were on location, and then the big man picked her out and flew her to New York, and she is headed to the hotel, where the big man will meet her for an assignation and the next day she'll start as another one of his "assistants" in the outer office. She signs contracts with, one can imagine, lots of non disclosure clauses.
 |
| Old Enough? |
The looks of this girl/woman are perfect. As Jane says, "She's just so young!" But the HR guy says, she's old enough. She's an adult. Well, technically, but she is said to be from Idaho for a reason. If you're from Idaho, you are ipso facto, unsophisticated.
But she is not so unsophisticated she is unaware she is trading sex for advancement. That much is clear the next day when she shows up at the office.
 |
| The Pro |
We see only four women who have made that bargain during the movie, and the other three are clearly old enough to know what they are doing.
So we have willing, consensual adults. In a canny casting feat, the first woman we see is a woman who radiates sexual sophistication. She awaits her appointment with a knowing, professional expression. She is there to do business.
Then there is the ingenue waif from Idaho, who has just found out what it really means to be given a "job" in the organization. She may seem a little dazed after her bedtime experience with the big man, but she is still game.
And the last is somewhere in between, a woman, not a girl, but still, in her video, you see someone who is half way in between the other two.
 |
| Halfway there |
But for Jane, it just all feels wrong. It is a promise of sex for stardom, but the stardom will never happen.
One woman, a woman higher up in management, remarks to Jane in an elevator, "She'll get more out of him than he will from her."
But you know that's just what that woman tells herself to be able to sleep better. It is, in fact, what every woman must believe as she heads toward that casting couch.
A lot depends on our perception, which is shaped in a significant measure, by how people look. The Idaho ingenue just looks so fresh and unspoiled. With the simple visual look of her all we need is her pathetic remark that she's "been in film" to understand how thoroughly out of her element she is. She is a lamb ready for slaughter.
Harvey Weinstein just looks so dissolute. You know none of the women he threw on the casting couch could have had any response to him but revulsion, but they went through with it, because they were ambitious.
"The Assistant" is a film of great discipline and intelligence.
To my mind, the real title is "Complicit."
If you go into it with the idea you are going to learn something, rather than be entertained, you'll come away thinking about it for days.
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