{"id":11728,"date":"2020-07-27T19:22:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T18:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11728"},"modified":"2020-07-28T16:09:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T15:09:54","slug":"first-runner-up-catherine-osullivan-for-the-assistant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11728","title":{"rendered":"First Runner-Up: Catherine O&#8217;Sullivan for <em>The Assistant<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Judges&#8217; Comments<\/strong>: The very, very close first runner-up was Kitty Green\u2019s recent The Assistant, a claustrophobic drama set in a film production office. This, we all agreed, was \u2018an impressive review that flows easily between critiquing the film itself and a dialogue about the world it exposes. There is an intelligent analyst at work here.\u2019 Above all, a remarkably timely film in the MeToo climate, the reviewer rightly noted, along with its skilful use of ambient sound to create extra tension.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The Assistant\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><strong>(dir.<\/strong><strong>\u00a0Kitty Green, 2019): reviewed by Catherine O&#8217;Sullivan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Midway through <em>The Assistant <\/em>, the new film by Kitty Green, a young female assistant waits by the office printer as it ejects glossy headshot after glossy headshot. A stack of actresses\u2019 faces piles up. Before leaving the headshots on her boss\u2019s desk, the assistant picks up one of them and studies it. It isn\u2019t clear what she\u2019s thinking. Without voiceover or explanatory dialogue, it is not until later that we can reevaluate this moment as a quietly pivotal one. It\u2019s one in a series of scenes that shift the burden of noticing and deciphering onto the audience, a clever strategy in this deafeningly quiet film, one of the first to directly address the legacy of #MeToo.<br \/>\nGreen effectively contrasts the enormity of this issue with the constrained scope of her narrative,following one woman over the course of one day. Jane (Julia Garner) arrives at work so early that it feels clandestine, but it\u2019s just a routine start in her role as an assistant to a high-ranking movie executive. Jane\u2019s daily tasks span the mundane to the inappropriate, yet Garner performs them all with the same resigned blankness. The film uses almost entirely diegetic sound, a decision that simultaneously captures the strip-lit inanity of an office job while also allowing the audience to tune into the low throb of unease that underpins every scene: the angry thrum of voices murmuring through doors, phone conversations half-heard and even less understood. The film is unrelenting in its close alignment with Jane, the camera clinging to her in a claustrophobic grip as she mutely goes about her job. Anchored in this tight perspective, we see what Jane sees, begin to suspect what she has probably suspected for a while: that her boss is abusing his power and that the young women who filter into his office may not be safe.<br \/>\nShortly after depositing the headshots on her boss\u2019s desk, Jane leaves the office for an impromptu meeting with the company\u2019s HR manager. Without underlining the causal link between the moment Jane studied the photo and her decision to finally speak up, the film manages to suggest that something has shifted internally for her. Empathy and action spring out of observation.<br \/>\nThe interaction with the HR manager (Matthew MacFayden) is the longest stretch of unbroken dialogue in the film and is therefore the most explicit about power, complicity and abuse. As Jane speaks, he takes occasional notes on a yellow legal pad. We can imagine what he\u2019s writing: isolated phrases, scraps that could amount to something or nothing, depending on your perspective. For the HR man, Jane\u2019s hesitations bleach any credence from the small details she\u2019s seized on. An earring found on the floor of an office could be evidence of something untoward, or it could just mean that the janitorial crew aren\u2019t doing their jobs.<br \/>\nMany reviewers of the film have noted <em>The Assistant <\/em>\u2019s debt to Chantal Akerman\u2019s 1975 masterpiece <em>Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. <\/em>Green herself has talked about the profound influence watching <em>Jeanne Dielman&#8230; <\/em>had on her as an aspiring filmmaker, noting especially that cinematic emphasis on the rhythm of a working day. Both films make visible the invisibility of women\u2019s work, whether that\u2019s peeling potatoes for dinner or scrubbing a suspect stain off your boss\u2019s couch. Equally, both films are examples of feminist collaboration between director and actor: in the case of <em>The<\/em> <em>Assistant <\/em>, Green and Garner worked together before shooting to interview real life film industry assistants. Delphine Seyrig took the title role in Akerman\u2019s film as part of a personal project to reinvent her own image as an actress, a self-imposed atonement for the type of idealised feminine she had played in her early career and later regretted. In 1981, Seyrig directed her own film, <em>Sois Belle et Tais-toi <\/em>, a collection of interviews with actresses about their experiences with sexual harassment. Seyrig\u2019s film opens with a succession of photographs of these actresses. Unlike the stack of anonymous headshots that fillips Jane into action, these women are named and allowed to tell their own stories.<br \/>\n<em>Sois Belle et Tais-Toi <\/em>is an important, if underseen, film and Green, previously a documentarian, could have chosen to make something similar for the post-Weinstein era. Instead, a subtly different impulse is at work in <em>The Assistant <\/em>. By choosing to work within a fictional construct, Green gives herself the space to let ambiguities fester. It\u2019s a brave choice that runs the risk of frustrating audiences. At no point does a woman clearly voice what has happened to her. Jane\u2019s attempt to expose injustices is a failure. Without a clear accusation there cannot be a reckoning. Instead, <em>The Assistant <\/em>acknowledges silence and suspicions, unvoiced concerns, lived experiences that can\u2019t or won\u2019t be heard. That is why the labelling of it as the first #MeToo film, or as being somehow \u2018about\u2019 Weinstein, is reductive. It is a film about abuse in the film industry that is not about individual perpetrators and victims, but rather the structures that allow such abuse to proliferate. It asks us, how do you function within these structures? How do you interpret what you see? What are the limits of empathy?<br \/>\nFilms, even where they are about working life, always elide the labour that have gone into their production. In the case of <em>The Assistant <\/em>, the accolades it has received have mostly focused on Green\u2019s direction and the excellent work done by Garner, who carries the film in an un-showy, deceptively physical performance. Yet the film reminds us of the behemoth industry that lurks behind even the most well-intentioned projects, the myriad decisions and compromises that allow films to be made. It is often uncomfortable viewing, both for its subject matter and for the austere restraint it imposes on itself. <em>The<\/em> <em>Assistant <\/em>is a subtly tough piece of film-making that should be seen for the grim, rich detail of its fabricated world, as well as for the ways it might alter how we perceive our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Judges&#8217; Comments: The very, very close first runner-up was Kitty Green\u2019s recent The Assistant, a claustrophobic drama set in a film production office. This, we all agreed, was \u2018an impressive review that flows easily between critiquing the film itself and a dialogue about the world it exposes. There is an intelligent analyst at work here.\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>First Runner-Up: Catherine O&#039;Sullivan for The Assistant - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11728\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"First Runner-Up: Catherine O&#039;Sullivan for The Assistant - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Judges&#8217; Comments: The very, very close first runner-up was Kitty Green\u2019s recent The Assistant, a claustrophobic drama set in a film production office. 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Previous writing has appeared in gorse, The Coven and Girls on Tops.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=354\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"First Runner-Up: Catherine O'Sullivan for The Assistant - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11728","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"First Runner-Up: Catherine O'Sullivan for The Assistant - The Manchester Review","og_description":"Judges&#8217; Comments: The very, very close first runner-up was Kitty Green\u2019s recent The Assistant, a claustrophobic drama set in a film production office. This, we all agreed, was \u2018an impressive review that flows easily between critiquing the film itself and a dialogue about the world it exposes. 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