"The Assistant," which opens January 31, is one of those films that sneaks in uninvited and stays there like an as yet undiagnosed disease. It is also a deeply needed film, especially for Hollywood, which denounces not only the sexual abuse rampant in the industry, but also the psychological abuse that plagues its entry-level employees.

Emmy-nominated Julia Garner (of "Ozark" fame) stars as young Jane, an overworked assistant to a big-time film producer. Although her boss, a media mogul, is nowhere to be seen (his silhouette can be seen through a doorway and Jane can be heard snarling at him on the phone), clues such as a syringe in a trash can and a meeting in a hotel room suggest that the faceless executive may be Harvey Weinstein.

But the heart of "The Assistant," however, is not the story of one abusive man who wields power recklessly and unstintingly. For he could be a powerful man in any industry. The film is more of a macro examination of why this man remains in power and the people who are complicit in it. I didn't want the film to be just about sexual assault," he said. I wanted to show that even people who are not sexually abused are, in a sense, victims. It's a whole system."

In this film, there is a palpable sense of indirect complicity at every level of the food chain: the executive waiting for his boss in a black sedan while finishing a "meeting" with an aspiring actress, the younger male producer laughing along with the vulgar joke, and finally, the lowest on the totem pole and the Jane we pity - the stuck-up subordinate who will lose his job if he doesn't book a hotel room. Like many of the film's characters, she is in a somewhat complicated position between victim and victimizer.

In a particularly brutal scene, Jane approaches a man in HR to report her boss's misdeeds, but he in turn threatens her career and tries to make her reconsider what she knows by gaslighting her. After failing, Jane cleans up the dirty dishes in the conference room, puts the syringe in her biohazard bag, and spends the rest of the day locked in an empty human shell with few options. You empathize with her intensely. But you cannot forget the girl in the hotel room. The film asks the question: can we decide who is guilty and who is the other victim?"

It's not an easy question to answer in any piece of pop culture, but it's one we should all be thinking about.

At the very least, it is Garner who wants to protect Jane. He says, "People are quick to criticize Jane, but the reality is, in a traumatic experience like this, you really don't know it's happening. It's so shocking, they don't know what to say or how to react. Jane is really helpless."

Jane has almost no dialogue throughout the film (no doubt a metaphor for her voice being silent). To embody her character, Garner first studied her manager's assistant and acquired her mannerisms. Then, for the purpose of learning what it feels like to be treated as an inferior, she met a former assistant in production who had been physically and verbally abused. But to create a persona that had to deal with sexual abuse, she had to dig deeper. I was very lucky," she says, "because I had never been sexually assaulted or verbally or physically abused. She says. The film was shot over 18 days, and it was difficult to turn Jane around after hours. I wondered why I felt so alone. Because Jane was so lonely." How much I manipulate my mind, my headspace. "Not the healthiest, but I want to give a good performance."

Her performance was good, very good, crushing: raw and unbearable to watch. Raw and unbearable to watch. But the film is a must-see, not so much to learn how the system keeps bad people in power, but to witness how the ripples affect those around them.

Spoiler alert: If you want a happy ending, you will be disappointed. As is the case with most real-life cases of grave injustice, the film does not end with a satisfying arrest scene, nor does it end with a moment of comfort that gives hope for Jane's future. You leave the theater emotionally exhausted, a little nauseous, and most importantly, distressed. For Garner, that's what matters.

"This film reminds us that we are human. I want everyone to see it, not because I'm in it, but because it's a very important film. It's a film that reminds everyone.

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