There is something about The Assistant that unnerves, unsettles and stays with you, long after it it's over. Despite its methodical nature and languid quality, the film thrills and packs an awful lot of punch into its 90 minutes. Its fleeting nature is perhaps it’s best asset. We are following one single day, in many ways there is nothing special about this day, but then in many other ways this could be the start of something major for our lead character. This is that rare film where every minute detail is so finely placed and decided upon, every hair and line of dialogue, that we find ourselves deep into a world that we remain distant from, despite being in the direct cross-hairs of it. The Assistant is a stellar film and one that may very well be a dark horse for this year’s Oscar race. A shining example of the sort of smaller film that will gladly benefit from this years's affected Oscar roster. 

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Shot in 18 days by writer and director Kitty Green, whose previous work has largely been in the field of documentaries, The Assistant is a film that undoubtedly marks a historical moment. The #metoo movement is now turning that corner where it is becoming depicted on screen and although sexual harassment in the workplace goes far beyond the movie industry and the arts, this is where the movement began and I feel that people are not noting the singularity of how that will affect the films on the topic. Vietnam Vets for instance, with the exclusion of Oliver Stone, were not necessarily making our Vietnam war films. Our film here has no grand narrative or series of interactions with characters. As aforementioned Green’s work prior to this film has been in the world of documentary filmmaking, with her most popular and most celebrated effort being her 2017 film Casting JonBenet. That sort of documentary nature is still very present here in her fiction film debut. What makes the film work so well in-fact is that we as an audience know so painfully well that this is far from a piece of fiction. We follow Jane, an assistant to a movie mogul, who we do not see and only hear. We follow her through her daily routines and work as she comes to terms with the true nature of her bosses relationships with many of the young and beautiful women he has come to his office. At the heart of the film is that choice I just mentioned, we intentionally do not see our predator. We hear him, repeatedly through off-screen arguments or through the walls of his office. We similarly never see his face, in some wonderful visual gymnastics that rival even the best of work from Douglas Heyes' direction of The Twilight Zone episode Eye of the Beholder. The power of this choice and the quality of Leslie Shatz overall sound design really cannot be valued enough here, it is the crux and power of the film and gives it the overwhelmingly dread drenched atmosphere that makes us unable to look away.

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The star of our film is Julia Garner, as Jane, our titular assistant. To put it plainly Garner’s performance here is frankly one of the best I have seen all year. So exquisitely crafted and subtle in its minutia. So painfully delicate in its decision of when and when not to reveal the truths. Garner I feel will face the same brand of overlooking that so many performances have done before, with people just failing to note the immense quality of a performance this subtle. Garner is so clearly in complete control of every facial expression and minute detail that an entire person is put before us. We don’t need extended expositional scenes of dialogue, because we know everything almost immediately. The ensemble is intentionally in the background, but the film does pivot on a central extended dialogue scene shared with Garner and Matthew Macfadyen, as Jane comes to visit HR. Macfadyen is so brilliant in this scene that it recalls the sort of one scene supporting performances wonders of Beatrice Straight and Christopher Walken before him. If I had a ballot I would vote for him. Macfadyen so brilliantly juggles passion, distaste, comfort and business that his final blow is perhaps the single most devastating moment in a film filled with deeply affecting ones. The rest of the cast add to this overall atmosphere of deep realism, with the ones who do get sparring lines delivering perfectly the blasé nature of the climate surrounding this sort of workplace practice. Green’s direction is subtle too, taking immense pleasure in building its world at its own pace, giving the same spotlight to the most mundane tasks, before giving that same micro-cosmic level of deep focus to something very important. The score remains distant and frequently avoids being used, further adding to the atmosphere by utilising the cacophony of office sounds as our soundtrack. The cinematography of Michael Latham is that off a stale office blandness that washes over the film, adding to the coldness of the outside world by letting it seep into the offices we are inhabiting. Green edited this film also, paired with Blair McClendon, and it just highlights the absolute precision to which Green has developed this film. I hope to god that this is not a one-off great piece from Green and that we can sit back and await an entire career of class work, but even if this is it, this is a tremendous piece that will indeed, as I first said, mark a moment in history, as the best period films of all time have always done.

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A tense, dark and unnaturally affecting 9/10. Propellant in pace, yet languid in nature. Stellar in performances, yet ungodly subtly. Sublime in directing, yet without grandly visually sequences. Powerfully written, yet only featuring one extended dialogue scene. The Assistant is a work filled with contradictions in its form and puts us in a position to re-examine what makes an epic film epic in nature. This very singularly and very small film for instance has one of the most epic contexts of the millennia and yet gives the same focus to cereal, as it does it’s grandest revelations. A marvellous film with one of the best performances of the year from Garner.

P.S. Can people in general please stop referring to movies with a painfully taut and methodical pace as “slow”. I have seen slow movies. Trust me. This is not a slow movie. There is of course subjective opinion and I have no doubt many will find this film boring, or indeed slow. However if one turns off all devices and allows themselves to be sucked in by the extreme quality of the work on screen, then I really do think the film’s pace is never an issue.

-Thomas Carruthers