Hello all, 

Happy New Year! After our short break over the holiday season, we are looking forward to another year of watching and discussing great movies with all of you.

On Monday, January 15th, we will be screening director Kitty Green's film The Assistant, which the New York Film Critics named one of the best films of 2021. Actress Julia Garner shines in her performance as an assistant to a powerful movie mogul in this drama about the complicity surrounding abusive behavior in the workplace that pre-dated the #Me Too movement.

Cinema Club meets at 6:30 pm in the Aspen Drive Library Meeting Room in Vernon Hills. No registration is required. We hope you can join us! Add to your calendar.

A few articles of interest about the film can be found below.

Becky and Nate

The Chilling Power of The Assistant

In his review for The New Yorker, Richard Brody points out that one of the most disturbing aspects of abuses of power in the workplace is the fact that such behavior is so often overlooked, denied or ignored by those who work there.

"In 'The Assistant,' Jane is defined by only the most superficial of markers... The blanking out of Jane is so conspicuous as to suggest a directorial strategy, and a chilling one: it leaves Jane as a silhouette onto which viewers can project themselves. The movie becomes a sort of agonized game, within the virtual framing device of self-reflection: How would you feel, and what would you do?"



Kitty Green on The Assistant

In this interview with The British Film Institute, director Kitty Green explains how she created the oppressive feel of the film and the motivation behind her decision to never show Jane's boss on screen.

"I wanted the audience to sense how much power he has over that workplace, and how corrosive that power was. So it was important to me that there were little bits and pieces of him, like phone conversations, but I specifically didn’t want anything too graphic. I think we all know what happens behind that closed door now, we’ve had enough of it. To me, what was more interesting was what happens on the other side of that door."