Movie Reaction: The Assistant

Formula: (1 / Roma) ^ (1 / Hail, Caesar!)

It's hard to get more "inside baseball" than The Assistant. It's a movie about the assistant to a movie executive (more than a little based on Harvey Weinstein). It covers a single day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner). She's the first person in the office, very early in the morning, and one of the last people out. Her job is everything from answering the phones to cleaning up to setting up schedules, making copies, babysitting in a pinch, doing the dishes, ordering lunch, and handling deliveries. I'll go ahead and say one of my small gripes about the movie is how much it packs into a single day. Then again, that possibly reflects that actual amount that a studio assistant does. Throughout the day, Jane gets repeated examples that something isn't proper with her boss. She finds women's jewelry on the ground. Other execs make jokes about sitting on the couch. A young woman shows who is being hired as an "assistant"...just as soon as she signs a lot of legal documents first.

If I had to assign this to a genre, I'd call it a "how you boil a frog" movie. The challenge of the movie seems to be explaining how good - or at least decent - people could let the "casting couch" activities (and worse) go on for so long. They either make jokes about it or convince themselves that it's mutually beneficial to both parties. There's an especially disheartening scene when Jane goes to HR and realizes the degree of difficulty substantiating a complaint; not to mention the horror of realizing that HR isn't as confidential as she believed.

Beyond that though, this movie captures the small indignities in the life of an assistant in this situation well. I'd be shocked if this wasn't written by someone who spent some time in this role. It's too specific to just be passively observed. Julia Garner is tremendous in a very quiet performance. She doesn't say much throughout, and when she does, she uses as few words as possible. She does a great job making a bunch of mundane tasks captivating to watch.

There are a few other familiar faces throughout. Matthew Macfadyen plays the pitch perfect HR manager. Kristine Froseth from Looking For Alaska is well-cast as the new "assistant". Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins are quite good as a couple coworkers who are far more used to the rythms of the office. Robbins in particular offers a glimpse into the nascent form of the type of exec Jane's boss becomes. An interesting choice is that they never actually show her boss. You occasionally hear him, but that's it.

Another detail that struck me was how it handled phone calls. It doesn't sound adjust to make sure you can hear the other end of the call. If anyone in the theater is making any noise, you can't hear what the other person is saying at all. This is intentional, but in a situation where the person next to you is eating popcorn a little loudly, it could be very irritating. This might need to be a subtitle movie for home viewing.

I find it odd that this movie premiered at Telluride, because it has a very Sundance feel to it, given the small budget, level of stars in the cast, and small scope of the story. I often refer to Sundance movies having more of a short story feel. The Assistant doesn't fill 90 minutes and still has a lot of down time. I'm always happy to watch a short movie, but this feels more padded than edited down. The very specific topic and somewhat dry presentation makes this a hard movie to sell to general audiences, but I really liked it for what it was. Julia Garner alone is worth seeing it for. She's inching closer and closer to a major breakout*. It also does a great job setting the scenario that has allowed the Harvey Weinsteins of the world to get away with things for so long.

*Some would argue that her Emmy nominated work on Ozark was already her breakout, but I'm talking about a next-level breakout: Oscar, franchise, and/or leading role.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend