The Assistant

Writer-director Kitty Green has strong feelings on how the MeToo era motion picture industry dehumanizes young women. But the movie's so laid back it feels like an invisible documentarian captured a workday. As someone familiar with offices of overpaid "creatives" with regressive social skills, I could've gotten the same impact by hanging out with peers after work--and skipping this viewing. Marginal recommendation for film students about to enter the industry and looking for a cautionary tale.

There's a lot in this film to unpack, going beyond just the obvious post-Harvey Weinstein sentiments and into a much-needed depiction of working in the film industry as being a dystopian wasteland of ego, cronyism, and systemic abuse. Green's minimalistic approach is well-suited to inducing an ever-present sense of threat and claustrophobia amidst the extreme banality of the tasks at hand, a firm nod to the formalist legacy of 'Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.'

Shows the agency business as a system of power and abuse that corrupts and commodifies everyone who stays with it. Maybe not corrupts, but it certainly dulls its workers to the basic human feelings of kindness and companionship. You could ask how bad a crime is really happening here, but that'd be missing the point. The point is indoctrination.

After watching this, I turned the TV on to something bright and colourful, and I felt like my eyes were about to explode from the transition.

I wanted to be sure that I was giving this a fair chance before I said anything, but for me there just wasn't enough meat on these bones to reach the level I was hoping for. Trust me, I don't dispute any depiction of anything that I see here. I appreciate this on the level of a down-to-Earth counterpart to a movie like "Bombshell". The uptick in intensity during/after the HR scene was welcomed, if a little hyperbolic for the tone of the rest of the film. Not a disappointment, but hoped for more.

Dull, vacuous, wet, irritating... and that's just the film! "Searing look" Searing?! ARE U JOKING? Not misogyny; Id be equally disturbed if lead male. Unless I got it 100% wrong & really its cunning skewer of mental damage FROM 1st world victim culture to 'victim', 'abusers', society & workplace - then its out of its damn mind! She HAS been badly wounded; by false perspective & expectations. Bombshell = about vile abuser backed by sick work culture. This..is, this..is..I..just...NO!