Original title: The assistant · Kitty Green · USA · 2019 · Script: Kitty Green · Performers: Matthew Macfadyen, Julia Garner, Dagmara Dominczyk…
Original title: The Trouble with Being Born · Sandra Wollner · Austria · 2019 · Script: Sandra Wollner, Roderick Warich · Performers: Jana McKinnon, Ingrid Burkhard, Dominik Warta…
Original title: Sennen Joyû · Satoshi Kon · Japan · 2001 · Script: Satoshi Kon, Sadayuki Murai · Animation.
As everybody knows, in the contemporary official story about relationships in the work environment, That old scheme that divided society based on its “class” has completely disappeared.. Scrapped, due to expiration, say those who inform us of these things, the old stereotype of the industrial worker as a mold of the modern employee, The old division between bosses and subordinates seems to have been blurred to the point where it is barely talked about.. In this liquid society we live in, nothing is what it seems. But, Despite the efforts to shore up this impression in our democratic minds, Stubborn daily experience tells us something very different..
In The assistant, Jane is a young college graduate who, Like every day, go to your workplace. Wakes up early. She leaves her house before dawn and gets into a company car that will take her to the office.. Always comes first. still in the dark, turn on the lights, starts your computer, prepare the work program for the week and, then, clean your boss's office. And although this last task is somewhat humiliating, So far everything is going relatively well.. It's another day. Monday, to be specific. After a while, his department mates arrive. That's when his real ordeal begins..
To attract the viewer's attention, the promotional strategy for the feature debut of Australian director Kitty Green is presented as the first film to address, although indirectly, the shocking cases of sexual abuse that sparked the #MeToo movement in the United States. And there are some similarities. Jane works at a film production company. Every day he sees some of those girls with perfect faces and sculptural bodies who dream of becoming great screen actresses pass by his table.. But these closed-door meetings in your boss's office or a hotel room, organized by herself, They contain suspicious behavior for Jane. And what's even worse: over there, in the office, everyone seems to know the terms in which this kind of pact is developed. A complex network of complicit silences allows the boss (to which, curiously, we never see), maintain meetings with the applicants in a sordid and petty exchange of favors for sex.
But if the proposal that he offers us The assistant will stay here, It would hardly be a mere film denouncing the many demons that seem to shadow the turbulent world of the North American film industry.. The problem (o, rather, The virtue) of this film is that the situations it presents point a little further, until we end up describing the picture of a pattern that we could well find in almost any other work context.. Taking as a guide the development of a single work day, The most interesting thing about this production is found in the play of relationships that are revealed in this small microcosm.. Shortly after footage, We understand that Jane has only been working at the company for a few months.. In the office, Share space with two other colleagues, appointed for the same functions, but with more experience and seniority than her. This difference marks the distance between them and establishes the starting point of this story..
Why, if we leave aside the specific sector in which its protagonist is employed, If there is something that Kitty Green's film is really about, it is the rules of submission to which we are subject in the current world of work.. Jane perceives and becomes aware of what the problem is. (among other things because he suffers the unpleasant consequences of it). Against this, Her own conscience impels her to take matters into her own hands and, even, try to report it. However, a subtle apparatus of interdependencies will crush all good intentions and desire for justice. In this intricate game of compliance and subordination, fear plays a central role. Fear of being singled out by the leadership as a problematic or incompetent individual, fear of losing your job, fear of the competition exerted by your own colleagues and candidates for your position, fear, definitely, to stay outside the wheel of supposed economic prosperity that maintains the system. Jane aspires to become, some day, in film producer. You will soon discover that, to reach the top (if this is possible), you will have to abide by the rules.
But if we pay a little more attention, We discover that Green's dramatic framework still extends to an even deeper level.. Supported by a solid booklet, of which she is also the author, The Canadian director leaves us small clues scattered throughout the film about what she wants to tell.. So, We will know Jane's relationships with her parents, to those who, we know, visit very little. After leaving university, Jane moved to New York. Gone are the protection of the family home and the glorious days of study, where the future was still fertile ground for fantasy and illusions. And this is where Green's film overwhelms us most forcefully.. Set your sights, depending on the age of the viewer, in that common past or in the future, one wonders about the meaning of a capitalism that, updated in its forms, the factory replaced by the office (pronto, teleworking) continues to take individuals as mere pieces of the same process of mechanization and alienation. What is all this for??, We are wondering. Crushed against the immobile wall of reality, the blindfold falls and the mirage is revealed. Will Jane be part of the game?
The second full-length work by Austrian director Sandra Wollner is also about mirages and illusions., From the inconvenience of being born. Here, we will meet Elli, a girl who lives with her father in a house with a pool somewhere far from the city. Elli maintains a very intimate relationship with her father.. However, some events will reveal strange behaviors in her. Little by little, the truth will be revealed to us. Elli is not a girl like any other: it's an android.
In the foreground, Wollner's tape warns us against our future relationship with artificial intelligence. In a world affected by loneliness that seems to, slowly, They accuse us of the absence of human relationships, there is a temptation to build them, to create a simulation that replaces them. The relationship between Elli and her father seems idyllic. However, to preserve it, The father must fill Elli's hard drive with memories that sustain the shared memory between them.. Without that memory, there is no human relationship. Memory on which intimacy and affection are supported. But Wollner comes to tell us that this picture of shared memories cannot be built so easily..
From the inconvenience of being born It refers us to the same conflict that it was about Her, Spike Jonze's celebrated film. In this, the character played by Joaquin Phoenix acquired an operating system that performed the same company tasks, in this case in the form of an electronic couple that is reduced to a simple voice. with this excuse, Jonze, like Wollner, He told us about the conflict of the emptiness of personal relationships in contemporary society. The problem was that this virtual personality was soon going to transcend its original functions to overcome the very fact of being a “human.”, becoming a kind of memory or expansive experience, which would result in the appearance of a new higher consciousness that would encompass, in one being, all possible experiences. Wollner doesn't go that far, but it comes to tell us something very similar. In the confrontation between humans and artificial beings, We discovered that they can develop their own personality that conflicts with their programming., which will produce certain emotional problems and, above all, of identity.
Unlike in Jonze's film, Sandra Wollner does not take the human side, but of the android. As the movie progresses, We are discovering the problems that Elli has to deal with that memory that has been installed. In fact, It is Elli's voice that speaks to us in the first person. Yes in Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's film, androids fought against the brevity of life, Elli fights against herself. Without doing it consciously, Elli wonders, who I am? To answer this question, He draws on his archive of implanted memories. These, instead, are scattered, disjointed. At one point in the tape, Elli escapes from the house where she lives with her father. In his escape, she meets a man who recognizes her. The new owner will reprogram Elli's memory. However, as happens with computers, the deletion is not complete and part of the previously installed memories remain, mixing with each other.
Having said that, The biggest drawback we find in this film is the fact that Sandra Wollner wanted to transfer that same impression of chaos and disorder that resides in Ellis' mind to her own formal architecture.. On this base, There are some events that are connected to each other according to a certain dramatic linearity and that focus on the relationship with his “father” and, after, with its second owner. But, in the background, little else we know about him/her. Driven by the memories and reflections of the android himself, the story becomes, from a moment, in a disjointed succession of events, sewn, without apparent order, to the representation of implanted memories, which makes its development difficult for a viewer who may feel somewhat disoriented., so that, in the end, don't know if what you are seeing happened in the past or is yet to happen, whether it is a real memory or an implant. This disorder makes the journey to the final credits too cumbersome and although Wollner clears the way for us towards any possible interpretation of his film, offering a radically open piece, on the other hand, We may feel like we have no solid foothold to hold on to.. From the inconvenience of being born is becoming, So, in a work in which the argument loses weight over the sensory impression. It doesn't matter so much about the plot or how it concludes., like the sensations caused by the succession of images. The problem is that, there has come a point, the proposal remains a somewhat repetitive exercise, causing a feeling of fatigue in the viewer, lost in a labyrinth of images without a very concise meaning, more aesthetic than descriptive or symbolic.
It is more than evident that, over time, Japanese animation has become a strong competitor in our country. In a market saturated by the different ramifications of the Disney empire, the anime genre has made a name for itself among certain sectors of youth, causing a true fan phenomenon. And it must be said that, for those who subscribe to this chronicle, It's really strange that this phenomenon has not already reached a broader audience. Although the Japanese anime industry also has quickly consumed and easily swallowed byproducts, even in this case it is much more imaginative and diverse than Western animation, too subject to certain patterns and very focused on children's films. A fact that can only be responded to well for cultural reasons, either due to the demands of the distribution dominance of the large North American production companies., or both at the same time.
Among those names known to fans of the genre is Satoshi Kon., owner of a brief, but interesting filmography of which this month the commercial theaters and video on demand platforms have recovered their second feature film, Millenium Actress. After the demolition of the Ginei studios, former mecca of Japanese cinema since the years 30 del S.XX, Genya Tachibana, a documentary filmmaker, visit Chiyoko Fujiwara's house, one of the former stars of the studios to interview him on the occasion of the event. During the meeting, Genya gives Chiyoko a special object: a key. The sight of this key will trigger a series of memories that take her back to her youth., when a chance meeting took place with a political activist who is fleeing from the police and with whom Chiyoko is going to fall in love.
Millenium Actress begin, So, to unfold in various directions, either as a romantic melodrama, a historical film and, riding on these two guides, a serious reflection on, again, to the construction of our identity based on our memories. Para Chiyoko, The meeting with the man who gave her the key will leave a very deep mark on her.. He doesn't know his name, he hasn't even seen his face (o, at least, it is not shown to us). Nevertheless, Chiyoko will dedicate her entire life to searching for him. In memory, an image: that of the man painting a picture in front of a snowy landscape.
Already in his previous feature film, Perfect blue, Satoshi Kon took the life of a girl who wants to become an actress as the reason for the plot.. In this point, It draws attention to how boldly Kon's cinema takes motifs from the contemporary world for its narratives.. Thus, It is not strange to resort to elements that are usually left out of animated fiction., What is the world of television like?, in the case of his first film, or that of cinema in this second long work. Faced with the dominance of fantastical imagery that prevails in the genre, Kon resorts without complexes to motifs of our time as the background of his fictions. In Millenium Actress, however, took a step further and, using Chiyoko's long life as an excuse, an old woman at the beginning of the story, Kon makes a summary, but very interesting review of the history of your country. Relying on the flashback representation of the films in which the young Chiyoko participated, The Japanese director forces us to move from the era of the ancient empires, passing through the 20th century and, beyond, until that future in which men will have abandoned Earth in their conquest of space. This pretext serves Kon and his team of illustrators to create a first-class visual and aesthetic exercise in a frenzy of images that, beyond the argument, ends up subjugating us.
But this game would remain a mere exercise in virtuosity if it were not accompanied by something more.. Also in Perfect blue, the plot excuse served the director to trap the viewer in a spiral of delirium in which, at times, we did not distinguish reality from dream, the fantasy of what really happened. Based on the main character's remorse for having accepted certain degrading conditions to become an actress., Kon superimposed his different personalities to build an intelligent thriller in which the plot develops on both the real and imaginary levels.. Here he does something similar. in his old age, Chiyoko does not distinguish the memory of what she experienced with the roles she played in her films, confusing facts in an effort to unravel the truth. In this sense, It is worth highlighting the trick of including the documentary director himself in Chiyoko's daydreams.. An intrusion that, although in principle it serves as a mere enunciative support to understand what is happening, little by little it will become more relevant.
Like in From the inconvenience of being born, Kon puts us in the minds of his characters and immerses us in that chaos of memories and filmed images, confusing one with another to hide that truth that its protagonist must reveal. Is love a dream? Can we live a life depending on a dream? But if in the Austrian director's film everything ends up marinated in a confusing concoction, Kon treats his spectator with greater respect, whom, in the end, overcome the apparent disorder, draws a very clear and precise line. Where Sandra Wollner hides, Satoshi Kon exposes himself with all the consequences. The work of a master. GERARDO LEON
