Movie Review : The Assistant (2019)
Part of what keeps sexual abuse such a taboo in society is how it is portrayed in culture. Terrified of humanizing predators, writers and directors often portray them like libidinous freaks with no self-control. If #metoo taught us anything is that it couldn’t be any further from the truth. These guys thrive on power and control. Portraying this reality in all its terrifying accuracy is pretty much the raison d’être of Kitty Green’s critically acclaimed The Assistant.
It is NOT a subtle movie, but it kind of works!
The Assistant follows a day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a junior assistant in an important film production company. She’s smart and shows great work ethic, but doesn’t exactly have the exuberant personality to impress her self-absorbed colleagues. It becomes increasingly clear to Jane that her boss is using his status to prey on young women and a surprise hire from Idaho (Kristine Froseth) convinces her to discuss the matter with HR. For better or worse.
This is not a movie that even attempts to entertain you. There are no love interests, no dramatic plot twists and no explicit violence. The Assistant is more like a borderline documentary experience in empathy. You live through Jane’s day with her. You experience her moral and ethical conflicts along with the undeserved adversity she gets for trying to do the right thing. It isn’t that different from the way a horror character experiences terror without seeing the source.
The paranoia and alienation Jane feels throughout her day accentuates the parallels with horror cinema, which I believe director Kitty Green was going for. One really clever technical detail is that she put distortion on the boss’ voice. He is never seen once, but comes off like some kind of supernatural presence. It’s minimalism at its finest. While inevitably anchored in realism, The Assistant is not that far from a Thomas Ligotti short story.
While I really liked The Assistant, I thought it felt somewhat short of the obvious goal it set for itself. Tonally, it’s a little bit of a one-note downer. Misery porn, if you prefer. I know what you’re going to tell me: Ben, there’s nothing beautiful about such a situation. You’re right, except that I believe Kitty Green (who wrote the screenplay) underestimated the emotional manipulation going on in such situation. Manipulators make you see things in your mind’s eye.
The Assistant is a very good movie. It’s Kitty Green first foray into fiction and she went all out. The result is a stern and joyless movie that is stern and joyless by design. It is meant to answer a very precise question that was never properly answered until now: why aren’t sexual predators immediately denounced? Although I believe The Assistant will not survive the test of time because of the way it presents itself, it answers that question pretty fucking well.
7.7/10
