THE ASSISTANT vs BOMBSHELL: Portraying Emotional and Sexual Abuse in the Workplace
Warning: the following article contains spoilers for The Assistant and Bombshell
It takes a long time to make movies. Taking into consideration all of pre-production – from the inception of the script to finalising the shoot – up until a film’s release following a period of post-production of variable length, it is not surprising when many productions feature references and nods to events that are dated even before the film is released. When revelations regarding the predatory behaviour of industry professionals such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Bryan Singer came to light, a ripple effect hit the Hollywood machine on an unexpected scale. This generated a wider awareness of the problem of sexual abuse suffered silently by women for decades at the hands of more powerful men who held their future in a suffocating hold.
It was only a matter of time until movies that tackled this delicate subject matter head-first were released. At the end of 2019, two similar films premiered: The Assistant by Kitty Green premiered at Telluride Film Festival before being released on VOD around February 2020, and Jay Roach’s Bombshell, which was heavily campaigned for during award season and ended up scoring an Oscar win for Best Makeup and Hair-styling. Planning for both films started around the same time in mid-2018, with the former having a significantly quicker turnaround due to its more limited budget (allegedly of $1.7 million) than Bombshell, which had a massive $32 million budget.
On the surface, both films share the same DNA: The Assistant is a slice-of-life drama that shows a working day of Jane (Julia Garner), young assistant to an executive producer in New York, slowly becoming more aware of the abuse happening inside his office; Bombshell tells the true-life story of Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) as they take down the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), after years of toxic and predatory behaviour towards women working for him. The main difference between these narratives is how the two directors approached them.
The Assistant was Kitty Green’s feature debut, coming from a documentary background. Her direction is stylised in a matter-of-fact way, utilising static wide shots for most of the picture, emphasising the mundanity of Jane’s workspace and repetitiveness of her job. The trailer for the film twisted what this was about, selling a tense thriller with a Fincher-esque soundtrack instead of the methodical, Chantal-Akerman-inspired slow-burn drama that Green made. It is no surprise that reception outside of the critics’ circle was cold, as many criticised the pacing and lack of engaging and exciting sequences, with a downer ending that put off many viewers.
Bombshell is the total opposite. Right from its opening, there are fourth-wall breaks, multiple camera angles, voice-over narration, funky music, and colourful costumes. The style of both the writing and direction is heavily reminiscent of that of Adam McKay, which is unsurprising since screenwriter Charles Randolph co-wrote The Big Short and McKay is close friends and collaborator with Jay Roach, who directed the film. The movie is fast-paced, featuring a massive cast of well-known actors, balancing three different characters and storylines, blending humour with drama. It all ends with an exciting climax where the villain is defeated, the heroes getting their honour and self-esteem back, and a pro-feminist message reminding viewers that they are in control of their destinies and should fight these oppressive powers. Basically, a classic Hollywood conclusion.
The Assistant and Bombshell are two sides of the same coin, one being more nuanced and subdued than the other. The power of Green’s film comes from the emphasis on visual storytelling: she lets the images speak for themselves, carefully constructing each vignette in a way that builds the cold world that these people inhabit, creating a puzzle of sorts where the audience has all the pieces to understand what is really going on, with many disturbing details coming from the production design alone. For instance, Jane is seen organising over a dozen medicinal syringes inside her boss’ cabinet, and later in the film, a couple of them can be seen all used up on his desk. By reading the label of the box in a close-up, one can discover they are Alprostadil injections, a treatment for erectile dysfunction. That alone says more about the big-shot producer than if there were a scene of Jane explaining to the audience what she is doing. The producer’s face is never seen, and neither is any instance of abuse, which only increases the tension and fear that both Jane and the audience feel as more disturbing patterns are revealed.
Compare this subtlety with that of Bombshell, which is excessively verbose throughout the entire film. Throughout the 108-minute running time, there are only a couple of scenes where the film slows down and has no dialogue or music in the background, instead spending the majority of the time showing actors in poorly staged shots talking endlessly about what is going on at Fox News and what they should be doing to bring down Ailes and his empire. There is no subtlety, no nuance, only nonstop talking. Even one of the standout sequences of the film, when Margot Robbie’s fictional character Kayla Pospisil is sexually harassed by Ailes in his office, holds little to no power since an almost identical scene was already witnessed as a flashback. Rather than creating a bit of mystery as to what might really be going on behind the doors of the office, revealing it to the audience together with Kayla’s experience, the filmmakers prefer to show their cards early on, leaving no doubt on what is really happening.
The whole of the film is annoyingly patronising, looking down at its audience and explaining everything that is taking place. There is too much context, making the film almost feel like a Wikipedia article coming to life, with name tags and dates constantly appearing throughout as a reminder that what is being seen really happened, even if one of the key players of the story was entirely fabricated. Roach and Randolph avoid some of the more interesting psychological consequences of having right-wing conservatives discuss the objectification of women and feminist ideals, instead taking the easy road and utilising faux female-empowering cliches to satisfy their gullible audience, given them exactly what they want.
Kitty Green knows how tragic and destructive sexual abuse can be, grounding The Assistant in true experiences that some of her friends and other women in the film industry have lived through. She explicitly wanted to make something darker, without hope. If Bombshell is the comforting blanket of security that there might be justice in the world, The Assistant is the cold shower that shocks and leaves one shaking. The reality of the day-to-day life of many women in the workplace, especially those starting out, comes to life through Julia Garner’s impeccably empathetic performance: the condescending way her co-workers address her, being forced to clean up after conferences, witnessing female colleagues crying in the bathroom, being gaslit for trying to comfort the producer’s enraged wife . . . Jane endures all of this in silence, the loud sounds of copying machines and blenders used as stand-ins for her internal screams. The one moment where she feels empowered, having mustered up the courage to go talk to the head of HR, she is belittled for her allegations and is threatened with being fired, proving just how expendable and powerless she really is. It is through this key scene, as well as the short interactions with other executives, that the reality of how abusers like Weinstein got away with their crimes for so long hits: to put it plainly, it slowly became part of daily life, as banal and mundane as throwing out the trash, normalised by those who did not act against him from the first time his behaviour became clear. The story may be entirely fictional, but it rings truer than anything in Bombshell’s semi-biographical script.
Another impressive way in which The Assistant crafts a more believable narrative is through its cast: outside of Julia Garner (who is mainly known as Ruth Langmore in Netflix’s Ozark) and Matthew Macfadyen as the head of HR (Mr. Darcy from 2005’s Pride & Prejudice), none of the other cast members are easily recognisable. It adds an aura of credibility to the film, none of them bringing any baggage from bigger roles or more famous performances that might have taken the audience out of the story. There is a short cameo of Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring, Watchmen) where he essentially plays himself (he is credited as Famous Actor) in a clever meta moment: Jane’s realisation that she is sharing the elevator with a star is relatable, and his presence lends authenticity to the production company, proving that it deals with proper A-list celebrities. It is an incredibly ingenious use of a cameo, unlike the ones in Bombshell. There, whenever a new famous actor appears, it is distracting. From Connie Britton as Ailes’ wife and Richard Kind as Rudy Giuliani, to the rapid-fire appearance of Alice Eve, Madeline Zima, Jennifer Morrison, and other actresses, ending with Malcolm McDowell’s presence in the last minutes of the film – they are such recognisable faces that it is hard to not be jolted every time they come on screen. Theron and Lithgow were unrecognisable thanks to Kazu Hiro’s transformative make-up, while Kidman and especially Robbie were left unchanged. Robbie’s presence and her character are what especially hurts the film: she became a superstar after starring in The Wolf of Wall Street and Suicide Squad, and her fictional character would have benefited from being portrayed by a newcomer, similarly to The Assistant’s approach.
Lastly, the technical elements of Bombshell are inconsistent and shallow at best. The use of fourth-wall breaks is used sparingly, which made each of them truly pointless; the handheld multi-camera set-up does not benefit the story in any particular way, and the constant use of zoom lenses leads to annoyance; the sound design is pedestrian, outside of the two ridiculous instances where they use a beating heart, referencing an early line where Megyn Kelly says that she can feel her heart when anxious. None of this complements the storytelling in any way, aping the style of McKay’s The Big Short superficially, coming off as a pale imitation and nothing more. Green has a much stronger grasp of the cinematic language, using Akerman’s masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels as a strong reference point: wide-angle tripod shots are paired with intense close-ups of Garner’s face, her eyes showing a wide range of emotions that cannot be put into words; the sound design engulfs viewers into the busy workplace, no room to breathe or speak; the editing is deliberately paced, lingering on many static shots to great effect, further highlighting the alienation of this office and how alone everyone is.
All these comparisons end up pointing to one major difference between the two films: perspective. Bombshell was a major Hollywood production, written and directed by two men, while The Assistant was a passion project of a single woman, financed by small production companies. One of these films is calculated to create a false sense of security in audiences, bringing them on an exciting journey that ends on a naively uplifting note, blissfully satisfied that all is right in the world and people like Roger Ailes can be brought down. The other reminds people how horrible and insidious abuse really can be, going beyond sexual harassment and presenting itself through small gestures and backhanded remarks that dehumanise women, leaving them between a rock and a hard place, either choosing to tell the truth and lose their job or living under oppression for decades to come. The Assistant will endure over the years thanks to its universal portrayal of an abusive work environment, calculated direction, and terrific attention to detail. Bombshell has already been forgotten among the indistinguishable pile of Oscar-bait releases, its hollow aesthetic and excessively liberal viewpoint dating it to the point of irrelevance.