Australian born writer/director Kitty Green
Actress Julia Garner (left) with director Kitty Green
THE ASSISTANT B
USA (85 mi)
2020 d: Kitty Green Official
site
A spare and minimalist film about sexual abuse in the
workplace, made in the shadow of the Harvey Weinstein trial for rape that is
currently under way, told from a woman’s point of view, following a day in the
life of a new hire on the lowest end of the ladder of an exclusive Tribeca film
production company in New York, made to resemble Weinstein’s Miramax, Jane (as
in Jane Doe, an anonymous figure), played by Julia Garner, who got her start in
Sean Durkin’s equally creepy Martha
Marcy May Marlene (2011), who should be thrilled at a new
opportunity, thinking her life may finally be on the right path, yet all
indications suggest something sinister is afoot, becoming an eerie film closer
to the horror genre, accentuating a murky atmosphere with dire
consequences. The film is dry and
emotionally minimalist, played down to its bare essentials, actually resembling
the extreme low-budget look of Shane Carruth’s PRIMER (2004) or Steven
Soderbergh’s BUBBLE (2005), early experiments in digital cinematography, where
the washed out color and an underscored sound design are as important as
anything viewed onscreen, where nothing is revealed, per se, but the story is
in what is suggested, where the near unspoken narrative is revealed by the banal
accumulation of tiny details, all pointing to a near mythical male authority
figure at the top who is never seen, but heard screaming profanities into the
phone when things don’t go right, as underlings are blamed, where they are
humiliated and bullied into writing immediate apologies, with male production assistants
helping compose the precise language of a “correct” apology, one of the
foundations upon which this company operates, as routine habits are ingrained
into the established culture where all are subservient to the man at the
top. Opening at the wee hours before
dawn, while the city is still asleep, a company car picks her up and delivers
her to the job, where she flicks on the florescent lights above the empty desks
and starts her day making coffee, eating cereal, going through emails, before
attending to the unglamorous details of her job, thanklessly organizing each
day’s schedule, including the latest financial reports, making sure each of the
upstairs executives have copies, while ordering office supplies and
coordinating travel and hotel arrangements.
As people wander in, she is largely ignored (no one ever speaks her
name), as people are glued to their phones or engaged in myopic conversations
that exclude outsiders, who are not meant to be a part, where it’s clear
everyone values their privacy, shunning any idea of sharing work information,
as each exists in their own work space, separate and apart from all
others. It’s an odd work environment,
where boundaries are fiercely protected, and everything is a closely guarded
secret, sharing nothing, as you’re likely to get blamed vociferously if
something leaks out.
Originally conceived as a documentary, following hundreds of
interviews of women in the industry, but also college students and theater
groups, Australian born writer/director Kitty Green envisions a quietly
shattering interior exposé that
becomes an alarming warning system of the trivial routines that become commonly
accepted in a male-dominated business where women are routinely relegated to secondary
and inferior roles. Jane starts her day
in clean up mode, straightening up the mess that was left behind in her boss’s
office the night before, which includes excruciatingly personal detail, like
discovering missing earrings or putting on rubber gloves to scrub clean certain
stains on an office sofa, even picking up used syringes, not to mention
disinfecting the executive chair, all done with no questions asked. Inspecting the contents of packages received,
they include boxes of bottled water, but also pills and medicinal products that
she carefully lines up inside his desk drawer.
She’s also seen washing dishes in a communal kitchen, with others
dropping their dishes nearby for her to clean, yet no one ever even
acknowledges her, including the other women working there. Perhaps the defining visual image of the film
is Jane delivering Xeroxed copies of scripts or a perfectly made smoothie to an
empty chair, where each delivery is expected to be punctual, even though her
boss is never seen, but remains a ghostly figure whose spectral presence hovers
overhead until suddenly erupting audibly in enraged phone calls after someone
screws up. Jane is all but invisible
herself, quiet, extremely reserved, ignored by the other two male assistants
sitting across from her, Noah Robbins and Jon Orsini, listed in the credits as
Male Assistant 1 and 2, essentially judging her every single move, making sure
she gets the call from the irate wife demanding to speak to her boss, blamed as
a co-conspirator in a seemingly irreparable marriage, then getting that
hysterical call from her boss wondering what the hell she told her, overly
disturbed by her inability to make the wife go away, an act for which she was
ordered to apologize, with the male assistants obviously getting some sort of
satisfaction, snickering behind her back like juveniles, as if this was a
beginner’s hazing ritual. Mostly what we
hear is an endless clicking of keyboards, the sound of a Xerox machine, or
brief bits of conversation heard from employees walking by, all producing an
overly detached working environment, where employees are isolated from one
another, while she goes from room to room sweeping up crumbs from various
tables and removing the coffee cups, placing everything in a plastic bag,
essentially taking out the garbage, while she’s also in charge of ordering
lunch, yet gets scolded if anything’s wrong with the order. When the other male assistants wish to get
her attention, they throw wads of scrunched up paper at her, pretty much
defining a degrading and dehumanizing work experience, yet they’re quickly at
her side helping her compose yet another office apology when needed.
Perhaps the most pervasive reality is the ongoing silence
that sits in the air, as these offices aren’t filled with that familiar workplace
chatter, instead you could hear a pin drop, accentuating a sense of personal
isolation in her day to day tasks, where every miscue is elevated and viewed
disproportionately, while offhanded comments about what goes on in her boss’s
office are commonplace and the subject of jokes, while she receives blank
checks for the boss to sign, which arouses her suspicion, but she’s told not to
worry, as he’ll know what they’re for. But she starts getting red flags when a new
arrival appears named Sienna (Kristine Froseth), who seems overly young and
without experience, working previously as a waitress, with the boss putting her
up in an exclusive hotel after flying her in on a company plane from Boise,
Idaho, while Jane is expected to train her as the new receptionist. When she realizes the boss is away,
presumably to visit this young hire at her hotel, Jane pays a visit to human
resources to report alleged misconduct, but the man sitting across from her
(Matthew McFadyen) paints a disturbingly *different* view of what she’s
reporting, belittling every aspect of her allegations, suggesting it may all be
in her head, that she may be under a lot of stress, working long hours,
probably hasn’t seen her friends in weeks, basically impugning her character,
discarding her account with utter derision.
And while she’s reeling from those remarks, he suggests she could be
jeopardizing her career by filing a complaint, acknowledging she has every right,
but undermines her at every turn, concerned only with protecting the interest
of the company. This astonishing scene
sends chills down your spine for the manner in which she is completely devalued,
her spirit broken, her testimony deemed worthless, eliciting tears from Jane,
with this man shoving a Kleenex box in her direction as a condescending gesture
of his ultimate triumph, demolishing any sense of self-esteem. As she walks out the door, he tells her
offhandedly that she has nothing to worry about, as she’s not his type
anyway. Yet by the time it takes her to
walk back to her desk, all eyes are upon her, as everyone in the office already
knows, shredding her reputation while violating every aspect of
confidentiality, where it immediately becomes clear the entire structure of the
company was built to protect one person.
Shortly afterwards, never feeling more helpless, she is again berated by
her boss, with the fellow male assistants once again helping her compose a
letter of apology. Of course, yet
another young woman pays a visit to the boss in his office, a young actress
looking for a part, bringing with her some sample video material, remaining
behind closed doors for the remainder of the evening, long after all the other
employees have left and gone home. Without revealing any graphic material
onscreen, the film is reduced to an enormous amount of specific detail,
creating an atmosphere of dread and mistrust, all conducive to a systematic
code of silence that prevails at every level, both male and female staff trained
to look the other way, with entry level employees having little recourse. A brief phone call home with her parents
offering trite and cliché’d gestures of support for finally landing that dream
job only punctuates her crushing isolation.
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