The Assistant

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.   

2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann

 

Director Maren Ade (left)with lead actress Sandra Hüller

 

TONI ERDMANN            A             

Germany  Austria  Romania  (162 mi)  2016  d:  Marin Ade

You had asked what’s the worth of living?  The problem is that it’s so often about getting things done.  You do this, you do that and in the meantime life just passes by.  But how are we supposed to hang on to moments?  Now I sometimes sit and remember how you learned to ride your bike or how I once found you at a bus stop… But you only realize that afterwards.  In the moment itself, it’s not possible.

—Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek)

Despite being the most popular and critically acclaimed film at Cannes 2016, Cannes critics ratings, registering the highest score ever at the Cannes Screendaily Jury grid, Cannes: 'Toni Erdmann' sets Screen Jury Grid record - ScreenDaily, the film was strangely shut out of winning any major awards in competition, where critics such as Manohla Dargis (NY Times), Justin Chang (LA Times), Kenneth Turan (LA Times), Peter Bradshaw (Guardian) and Guy Lodge (Variety) wrote that the decisions of the jury were quite simply “baffling,” especially considering the ongoing criticism targeting the festival’s scarcity of woman directors, where the festival missed a rare opportunity to recognize and reward a rising female talent.  By all accounts, it was a major shock when that didn’t happen, as the film is a major cinematic statement, one of the more original works to hit the festival circuit.  While nearly every film has some detractors, even on what constitutes a cinematic masterpiece, as films are often misunderstood at the outset and develop a reputation over time, what distinguishes this film is the pure enjoyment factor, as it’s hard not to dispute the sheer boldness of originality on display, written and directed by Ade in just her third film, where this far and away eclipses her earlier works in terms of complexity and scope.  While both earlier films are distinctive, THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (2003) is a minimalist walk through a self-induced psychological purgatory, where a perfectly ordinary middle class setting takes a turn for the worse, shot in a near documentary style, including a final shot to reckon with, which actually draws gasps from viewers, while 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #9 Everyone Else (Alle Anderen) (2009) which won the Jury Grand Prize (2nd place) at the Berlin Film Festival, is a far more sophisticated portrait of a doomed, yet good looking and seemingly progressive middle class couple whose sexual attraction hides their more deep-seeded disinterest in one another, where the camera incessantly hovers near them, perpetually exposing their attempts at maintaining a socially acceptable cover façade while ignoring all evidence of a deeper divide.  One might call Ade an on-the–fringe miserablist, though not full-fledged like Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, but both show a fondness for documentary realism, then embellishing the prevailing social order with remarkably downbeat unpleasantries.  This film could be described as a dazzling choreography of awkward and uncomfortable moments, an unflinching portrait of embarrassment, while also offering a searing commentary on displacement and dehumanization in the modern workplace, where feeling anxious and exceedingly insecure is the new normal.  At the same time, the film is a shameless father/daughter comedy battle of wills, a screwball portrait of family dysfunction, where each is willing to go to outrageous lengths to outmaneuver the other.  

Delving into previously unexplored territory, most of us are not at all familiar with the two leads, Austrian actor Peter Simonischek as Winfried, the extremely unorthodox, somewhat sleazy, shaggy dog father, and Sandra Hüller, his all-too normal daughter Ines, very precise in her efforts, a stressed-out, workaholic management consultant who is subjected to an unannounced, unexpected visit from Dad, leaving his home in Germany to visit her in faraway Bucharest, a visit that has enormous implications in her already existing turbulent world of trying to establish successful corporate relations.  In a film of this nature, the less you know ahead of time will likely increase your appreciation for the film exponentially, as, like any good comedy, being caught off-guard is the secret to its success.  The film’s near three-hour epic scale is part of its unique spacial architecture, set in a soulless Tatiesque landscape of towering glass skyscrapers, corporate convention halls, deluxe hotel suites, expensive meals, champagne, disco parties, and elegantly pampered hotel guests with endlessly flowing drinks in ultra-chic cocktail lounges, all part of the glamorous and exquisitely clean look of global capitalism, where the superficiality of the outer veneer accounts for nearly everything, where backroom mergers and behind-the-scenes deals are transitional phases necessary to bolster the financial bottom line, where it’s all about executive privilege, protecting those at the top, making sure they remain financially above the fray, even at the expense of that loyal and dedicated army of employees that sacrifice their positions before the altar of corporate greed.  Somehow, without expressly pointing any fingers or making any direct political commentary, this just happens to be the scathing setting for the film, taking place within a sprawling canvas of international commerce that initiates important meetings and special reports, transnational phone calls with interpreters, symposiums offering the presentation of bold ideas and suggestions, all with the hopes of impressing the top executive brass, as they’re the ones controlling the purse strings and are chiefly responsible for whether or not you have a job tomorrow or not.  Just how far is one willing to go in order to make a good impression?  Or in this case, how much humiliation are you willing to endure?  In this vastly expanding, seemingly limitless world of competing expense accounts, like something out of the delirious hallucinations of American Psycho (2000), Ines is trying to make her mark, to get noticed, to earn a living in the rampantly sexist, testosterone-filled, shark-infested waters of corporate downsizing, where her proposals, if they’re to be accepted, must demonstrate the brazen wisdom of eliminating more positions than the other guy, where she must be willing to strategize and justify swift and ruthless sacrifices, like an extremely well-precisioned military operation, where the carnage is needed to win the prize and claim that ultimate victory.  It’s all about the prestige of the company, supposedly built to last, while the minions of temporary workers will come and go. 

Francine Prose from The New York Review of Books, December 22, 2016, Prankster and Daughter:

In a revealing scene, Conradi (Simonischek) is waiting to meet Ines in an extravagantly upscale Bucharest mall that, complete with an indoor ice-skating rink, is the capitalist equivalent of Ceaușescu’s palace.  It’s the largest mall in Europe, Ines has informed him, in a country in which hardly anyone has any money.  They have come there because Ines has been asked to escort on a shopping trip the wife of a CEO with whom her company (a consulting firm that advises corporations on how to “outsource” their labor forces, and in the process fire a significant number of their employees) hopes to do business. 

In a revealing scene, Conradi (Simonischek) is waiting to meet Ines in an extravagantly upscale Bucharest mall that, complete with an indoor ice-skating rink, is the capitalist equivalent of Ceaușescu’s palace.  It’s the largest mall in Europe, Ines has informed him, in a country in which hardly anyone has any money.  They have come there because Ines has been asked to escort on a shopping trip the wife of a CEO with whom her company (a consulting firm that advises corporations on how to “outsource” their labor forces, and in the process fire a significant number of their employees) hopes to do business. 

When Ines at last appears with the CEO’s wife, who is flushed with the exhilaration of having spent so much money on luxury items, it again becomes clear—in her obvious willingness to put herself at the woman’s disposal—that Ines lives only for her work, that she is in thrall to her bosses and her “team,” and that her only desire is to succeed, at any cost, and perhaps win a hoped-for transfer to Shanghai.  Her father gives her a searching look, then asks, “Are you really human?”

Without revealing any of the hidden secrets that make this film such a novel surprise, this is a film that accentuates financial insecurity, that goes out of its way to visualize economic inequity, as outside the sleek windows of the modern 5-star hotels, one sees dirt playgrounds where kids nearby play, living instead in tenement row housing where people are literally on top of one another, packed together like sardines, remnants of a forgotten era in Romania’s communist past.  Add to this the language in the modern era workplace, which consists of cliché’s and an invented vocabulary of workspeak that is completely meaningless outside the workplace, as it’s a phony and fake language, sucking up to one’s bosses, agreeing inherently, without ever being able to say what you really mean, as you’re too busy degrading yourself publicly, continually deferring to the so-called expertise of your boss, where the film deftly highlights the routine humiliations of modern life.  The consequences are so severe that her father asks her, “Are you really human?”  While this may seem excessive, yet it all plays out in a kind of chaotic tug of war between father and daughter, by turns hilarious, excruciatingly painful to watch, yet also deeply moving, as Ade paints such an intimate portrait of two desperate souls, each trying to have their own way, where there’s a playful give and take where each plays along with the other, growing exceedingly irritated at having to do so, where it’s one of the more cleverly written pieces of cinema in recent memory, where the vastness of the ever-expanding canvas keeps imploding on itself, as the best laid plans continue to break down, requiring new strategies, where the father’s inner sense of humor is unleashed like a force of nature, or a genie exploding out of a bottle, causing such a high degree of embarrassment to Ines, who couldn’t be more straight-laced and uptight, a conscientious woman climbing a very male-dominated corporate ladder, always overly sensitive about protecting her image, where she constantly endures one pitfall after another, usually at her father’s expense, as he’s stupefied to discover this stranger inhabiting his daughter’s body.  So it’s an hour into the film before he resorts to his ultimate weapon, taking on the role of his alter-ego, Toni Erdmann, a specialist in practical jokes, a guy in a cheap suit, horribly unflattering wigs, who has a habit of carrying crooked false teeth in his pocket, where his notion of being an obnoxious irritant, turning up unexpectedly and embarrassing her in front of her friends and colleagues, becomes an exercise of the surreal, as there’s nothing he wouldn’t resort to.  The film largely follows the point of view of Ines, revealing her conflicting emotions throughout, where her eroding confidence in herself wears down, ultimately exposed as a mask, covering up her more vulnerable humanity, yet this is part of the workplace armor that one is required to wear, men and women, a camouflage of protective outerwear hiding the human within.  The final hour kicks into a new gear and simply surpasses all expectations, as our sympathies with the two characters are constantly tested, displaying an ebb and flow of constantly shifting moods, reaching unseen heights of comic farce and outrageous spectacle, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades, if ever, where plenty of this film is cringeworthy, yet also incredibly funny, and like Chaplin, the big surprise is how profoundly moving it becomes by the end, becoming an almost tender look at the absurdities and despairs of modern life.