➤ THE ASSISTANT, from p.28 ��������������������������
laughing on the phone, but who knows what
they’re actually listening to? Garner’s casting
echoes her role in the TV series “The Americans,”
where she played a teenage girl being
manipulated with drugs by an older man to get
access to her CIA agent father’s files.
Green’s camera often adopts Jane’s point of
view. It looks up at New York’s tall buildings as
Jane does. (She rides into Manhattan from Astoria.)
It also looks down when she does office
tasks. However, it keeps its distance. “The Assistant”
is careful never to sexualize or objectify
Jane. But it frequently films her in long shot,
from a static camera reflecting a more voyeuristic
perspective. Jane herself becomes a voyeur
at the end, looking up at her office for a glimpse
of her boss’ behavior.
Green carefully thought about the implications
of form for her story. She avoids devices
like music; the closing credits mention composer
Tamar-kali, but unless I missed something
she only contributed the cello piece that plays
at the very end. One can’t exactly say the film
avoids manipulating the spectator, but it creates
a buzz of tension without giving us access
to the world it depicts. There’s an enormous
amount of offscreen space at work here, but
“The Assistant” shies away from directly showing
the most powerful man. One of the first artistic
responses to the #MeToo movement was
a one-man play written, directed, and acted
by Steven Berkoff as Harvey Weinstein. David
Mamet went on to write “Bitter Wheat,” in
which John Malkovich also plays a Weinsteinlike
abusive studio head. “The Assistant” goes
far to avoid the danger of making evil men attractive
by turning them into anti-heroes in the
name of understanding them.
Green’s background lies in documentary. She
has depicted the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN
and the cultural significance of JonBenét
Ramsey’s life and disappearance. The script for
“The Assistant” reflects that grounding; she
based it on extensive research, not just one
woman’s story. Nor did Green solely investigate
the film industry.
If “The Assistant” refuses to show the violence
depicted by powerful men directly, the movie
spreads it out across the entire landscape. This
is not a simple story about one bad apple abusing
a woman; it shows a system where business
is organized so that people are complicit in rape
culture and unable to confront it without losing
their jobs. The emphasis on the grind of office
life hints at something even larger. “The Assistant”
connects a culture that expects people to
devote their lives to work while being treated
like crap with the way the 1% abuse their power
in every realm they can.
THE ASSISTANT | Directed by Kitty Green |
Bleecker Street Media | Opens 31 | Angelika
Film Center, 18 W. Houston St. at Mercer St.; angelikafi
lmcenter.com/nyc
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GayCityNews.com | January 30 - February 12, 2020 29
/nyc
/GayCityNews.com
