Mark Reviews Movies: THE ASSISTANT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 7, 2020

It seems like an ordinary day for Jane (Julia Garner), who works at the New York City office of a Hollywood studio or production company. Apart from one scene in The Assistant, when Jane decides to tell someone that something is amiss with her boss' behavior, it is a perfectly ordinary day for this woman. It's that sense of normality, coupled with the mounting realization of what's happening when Jane's boss disappears at a fancy hotel or shuts himself in his office during late-night meetings, that makes writer/director Kitty Green's film as disturbing as it finally becomes.

Green, wisely, never explicitly says what Jane's boss, an all-powerful executive at the company, is up to when arranges a meeting with a pretty new assistant, fresh off the plane from Idaho, at a hotel or stays in his office with an aspiring actress after everyone has left the building. She doesn't need to. The silence, as well as the innuendos and the not-so-hidden threats, speaks louder and with more forcefulness than any explicit description or depiction could do.

The silence is, indeed, the point of this film. Green forces us to get used to it during an extended introduction to Jane's professional life. She lives in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens and has to wake up before the sun rises to take a cab to the office in Manhattan. The sun still hasn't come up when she gets there, and no other employee has arrived yet, either.

That's her time to turn on the lights, to make coffee, to print out the weekend movie grosses by region, and to quickly eat as much of a bowl of cereal as she can. On this day, some of that personal time is expended because she has to tidy up the boss' office. This, again, is just an ordinary day for her, so we expect the tidying is part of her daily routine. There's a dark stain on the couch to scrub with rubber gloves and a sturdy brush. An earring is lying on the floor, too.

Jane is alone during all of this, and that's the other aspect of the character to which Green accustoms us during this extended sequence. She's on her own through the various routines and processes that need to be completed before anyone else steps off the elevator, and she's on her own for the rest of the day, too.

The film, which simply presents a slice-of-life portrayal of Jane's work day, constantly sees her at the bottom of this hierarchy. She may be the boss' assistant, but in a way, that makes her everyone's assistant. If she's met with any kind of look, it's often frustration bordering on disgust. Because the boss is gone so often, she's the one who gets the looks of annoyance.

It's something, at least. Most of the time, she's invisible. While two women talk about their careers in the break room, Jane is washing some dishes in the sink. The women leave and leave behind their dishes, too. Later, the executive's wife (played by Stéphanye Dussud) arrives with two kids in tow. Jane becomes the babysitter. The boss and the two other assistants (played by Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins) outside the executive's office essentially see Jane as a different kind of babysitter. It's her job to take the wife's phone calls whenever she's upset about her husband's repeated absences.

This is, for the most part, the extent of the film—watching Jane as she's overwhelmed, ignored, scolded, patronized, yelled at by the boss, and left un-thanked for the countless little things she does to make everyone else comfortable. We only learn a little about her outside of the office (She forgot to call her father on his birthday, because she was working over the weekend), and that's just enough. This job, after all, is the extent of her life now. Jane eventually wants to become a producer, and this high-stress job of what amounts to mostly busywork is a foot in the door. It's a job that hundreds would be happy to take if she doesn't want it.

That's it in terms of plot and characterization, yet the film is engrossing for how attuned Green is to the details of the work and of the various dynamics at play here. There's also the central mystery of the boss, who is never seen and only heard (often yelling, sometimes offering a throaty laugh, and always referred to, with an almost Biblical reverence of power, as "He"). It's not much of a puzzle, considering all of the pieces that Green puts in front of us over the course of Jane's routines (that stain, the earring, the headshots—of only women—being printed off for possible meetings, the wife's angry accusations, and the eagerness with which he wants to meet with new assistant, whose desk ends up within view of his office).

In case the point isn't clear, though, Green provides us with a scene between Jane and a seemingly attentive and friendly HR man (played by Matthew Macfadyen). While that scene may underscore what doesn't need to be emphasized, the process of it—how the man plays ignorance and then shows his true self—is chilling. "You don't have to worry," he tells Jane as she's about to leave. "You're not his type."

The film, bolstered exponentially by Garner's quiet but layered and evolving performance, is a pointed dissection of how such ugliness can be ignored, accepted, and even justified. Through all of the knowing jokes and the silences when something could be said and the matter-of-fact statements that such actions are just ordinary in this business, The Assistant slowly, deliberately crushes us with how the wrong so easily becomes the norm.

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