Female Film Critics 24/375
I want to think that this quietly brutal film might be an eye-opener for those who don’t understand how cruelty, abuse, and discrimination get perpetuated, particularly as experienced by women. But I also have to concede that what this movie lays out in such shockingly simple terms, might not be accepted as realistic by those who would prefer to deny its harsh truths.
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Made all-the-more timely given the verdict in the sexual misconduct trial of disgraced Miramax mogul Harvey Weinstein, Kitty Green’s workplace drama profiles how power enforces silence about sexual coercion and harassment.
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Garner’s riveting performance, the use of ambient office noise instead of a traditional score and Green’s decision to keep Jane’s omnipresent boss unseen – although we do overhear a couple of his threatening, profanity-laced phone calls that she stoically endures – all keep the slow-burn drama smoldering.
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Gird your loins for The Assistant. Be ready for a quiet film that chills you to the bones, kind of like 2018’s The Guilty in its building force. Be ready for a film that explains so much about corporate harassment, about women’s abuse, about silencing victims and whistle-blowers.
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Unlike the overtly melodramatic Bombshell, director and writer Kitty Green’s The Assistant instead offers a more everyday slow-burn alternative to a drama inspired by the #MeToo era. Its greatest asset is a subtle yet deeply felt performance by Julia Garner of Ozark and Grandma fame as a witness to the evil that the Harvey Weinstein monsters of the world do to the women who are under their sway. In contrast to the depiction of the Fox News sex-abuse scandal, this scenario could happen in almost any workplace and is far more relatable.
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Kitty Green was on the Stanford campus in fall 2017, conducting interviews for a documentary about sexual misconduct on college campuses, when news of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein broke. The Assistant, Green’s feature film about a day in the life of a producer’s assistant, the type of person New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who broke the Weinstein story, characterize as being part of the “complicity machine” that enabled Weinstein’s monstrous behavior for so many years.
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To watch this film while Harvey Weinstein is on trial for rape is a gut punch. Australian writer-director Kitty Green’s minimalist, keenly observed study of a young woman, Jane (Julia Garner) who works for a movie mogul in downtown New York is clearly based on Weinstein. But even more illuminating is its depiction of an exploitative, nearly cult-like, soul-crushing work culture that enables an abusive predator.
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A polite command, “Show her in,” takes on a chilling connotation in award-winning Australian filmmaker Kitty Green’s riveting dramatic feature debut, The Assistant. Green takes a savage look at a typical day in the life of an aspiring, competent and well-educated junior assistant who has just landed a promising position working for a powerful entertainment industry executive. The story is inspired in part by the #MeToo investigation into workplace sexual abuse allegations by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and others that have been chronicled in the media over the past three years, and most recently in Ronan Farrow’s bestselling novel, Catch and Kill, and podcasts.
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Not all #MeToo moments are shocking or dramatic; one of the most terrible things about the culture that’s fostered so much abuse, fear, and doubt is its very insidiousness. All of that is made quite clear in The Assistant, writer/director Kitty Green’s eye-opening drama about a day in the life of an entry-level Hollywood hopeful.
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