A day in the life of evil

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/05/2020 (1976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is a fable that a frog being put into a pot of boiling water will jump out, but a frog put into tepid water that is slowly brought to a boil will stay in the pot. The frog doesn’t notice the water getting hotter. The frog doesn’t know enough to jump out. The frog dies.

It’s not true, of course. A frog will eventually jump out of the water. But as a metaphor, it has traction: it’s harder to notice gradual changes versus sudden ones. And as we’ve seen while bearing witness to the #MeToo movement, nobody seems to know this — and how to manipulate it to their advantage — better than people in positions of power.

That insidious, incremental abuse of power is at the core of The Assistant, a film by Kitty Green available now at Cinematheque at Home, an on-demand screening service being provided by the Exchange District theatre during the pandemic.

The story follows Jane (Julia Garner of Netflix’s Ozark) through a single day of her life as an assistant to a successful and rather terrifying New York City entertainment tycoon who is never specifically named but is very obviously based on Harvey Weinstein.

Jane dreams of one day becoming a film producer, so she dutifully performs the tasks assigned to her with more patience than her employer deserves.

We spend a lot of time with Jane in her daily routine of preparing coffee, making photocopies and getting yelled at on the phone. It’s all quite banal and infinitely relatable for anyone who has ever worked a similar gig.

Jane, a recent college graduate, is a fairly new employee, and the honeymoon period of her new job is starting to wear off. Still, she pushes on, focused on her dreams, determined to make a good impression, and willing to do anything to succeed.

But there are setbacks and complications. Incremental moments of harassment, of abuse, of manipulation begin to creep into her day, mounting so slowly they are almost imperceptible until it finally boils over and Jane has no other choice than to stand up against them, only to discover she is completely powerless to fight back.

This takes place in the form of a new assistant, Ruby (Makenzie Leigh), who attracts the attention of her boss. Jane is concerned that Ruby is being abused and makes the decision to go to HR about it, where the manager (Matthew Macfadyen of HBO’s Succession) gaslights her and assures her she has nothing to worry about.

There is a mundanity entrenched in the film The Assistant that is almost infuriatingly relatable: the errands, the servitude, the naive belief that if you work hard enough and do the right thing that you can achieve your dreams.

And there is abuse that is also relatable: gender-based sexual coercion, age-based discrimination and a general belief that abuse can lead to reward, if we’re strong enough to tolerate it with a smile.

Taking place in real time, with the camera always alongside Jane, The Assistant is a claustrophobic, powerful film about a totally normal day in a completely normal office where there is nowhere to hide and nowhere is safe.

Weinstein was convicted to 23 years in prison for what he did, but what about his fictional counterpart in The Assistant? What about all the other men at the top of their industries who are also preying on those weaker than them?

Green doesn’t offer any answers in her tautly written script, but she does shine the brightest light possible on a situation too many women find themselves in on a daily basis, forcing us to imagine what comes next.

The Assistant is available until May 15 at Cinematheque at Home, via winnipegfilmgroup.com

Frances.Koncan@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @franceskoncan