audience responses.
At film festival Q&As and after screenings
they queue to tell her what her debut fiction
filmThe Assistanthas meant to them. How
they were, like the film’s protagonist Jane,
stuck in a toxic work environment, carrying
out banal tasks, shouted at, belittled, overlooked
and ignored.
“A lot of people respond strongly,” Green
says. She’s in Berlin, whereThe Assistanthas just
been screened to rave reviews, an experience she
has found almost overwhelming. “People really
seem to get what we’re trying to say. I’ve had
people grab my arm and want to touch me, which
is very emotional, and others who have stood
there quietly and then started talking about
what it meant to them. I’ve had male assistants
say they had a female boss and a similar
environment to that depicted in the film, and
people who weren’t in the film industry, people
in cosmetic companies, even the yacht industry,
tell me about their experiences.”
Sometimes those experiences cross
generations. “I even had a mother and son where
he was saying to her, ‘When I was calling you and
saying that everything was fine and you were
telling me it was a good job opportunity — this is
what it was really like.’ It’s kind of shocking to
learn how many people identify with it. It makes
you sad. But at the same time, people keep saying
that they’re grateful to be seen.”
Just an hour before Green speaks toEmpire,
Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of third
degree rape and committing a criminal sexual
act in the first degree. His shadow looms large
throughout our interview, not least because
The Assistanthas been repeatedly described
as ‘the first great movie of the #MeToo era’,
a phrase the 35-year-old Green is not entirely
comfortable with.
a predatory monster, but that almost everyone
else working there is aware of it. Green allows
silences to spin out, while dialogue is sparse,
the camera largely focused on Jane’s face or
capturing the mundane tasks that fi ll her days.
As we watch her struggle through the latest
of these days, a routine that begins before
sunrise and ends long after sunset, we see her
slowly decide that she is unable to simply ignore
her increasing unease with The Boss’s behaviour.
Jane is the smallest cog in a soul-crushing
machine. She is also the only person to act. Yet
that decision, while central to Green’s story, is
not the only reason why The Assistant lingers so
long in the mind. The fi lm’s real power comes
from the way in which Green’s camera captures
every terrible moment of Jane’s awful day.
We watch as she is largely ignored by
her male counterparts; see her stand at an
executive’s desk, silently willing him to look
up and notice her; follow the male assistants into“It’s not that I have a problem with the label,
but it is weird when people say it’s a #MeToo
movie because I don’t think I’d ever call it that,”
she says. #MeToo coverage, believes Green,
often focuses on getting rid of abusive men,
whereas her film focuses on someone with little
power. The Australian writer and director’s
interest lay in really drilling down into what
makes a workplace environment toxic and asking
why we continue to fi nd bullying behaviour
acceptable. The result is a fi lm that forces the
audience to consider their own behaviour, and to
ask: “Have I ever been guilty of looking the other
way for an easier life?”C
OMPLICIT BEHAVIOUR IS everywhere
inThe Assistant. The story focuses on Jane
(Julia Garner), the newest assistant at
a New York-based fi lm company, following
her as she realises not only that the head of the
company (referred to in credits as ‘The Boss’) isKITTY GREEN ISMOVEDthe most bythe