The Intern (2015)

Watched 'The Intern' (2015) on Netflix.

The sheer variety of themes and story lines that these movies explore is impressive, inventive and speak of courage. I mean, I know they have themes other than boy meets girl, but some themes will take you by surprise.

Jules (Anne Hathaway), the CEO of a Brooklyn based fashion retail company ‘About the Fit’, is assigned to work with graying and wrinkling Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) who has been hired as part of their senior citizen intern program. She is initially skeptical about him, but it turns out he has value to offer and lessons for her from his experience.

Ben is a widower, retired, but not tired.
“Freud said, love and work, work and love”
“Retirement? That's an ongoing relentless effort in creativity”
“Musicians don't retire. They stop when there's no more music in them... Well, I still have music in me”.
So saying he applies for this job. The jargon of the modern digital world is Greek and Latin to Ben, but he is going to try.

Jules, the efficient CEO who has taken her company forward at rocket speed(“she works on all cylinders all the time”) is initially skeptical about Ben and does not assign him any work of significance.
But Ben tries to be of help to her in small and big ways, from clearing up a messy desk to summarizing loose data into a meaningful report about buying patterns of user segments in the USA, from driving her home and picking her up for work, to breaking into her mother’s house to hack a computer and delete a stinker email that Jules had sent accidentally. The movie is about how he wins her confidence, how the job improves his life and how he stands by her through the hardships of her life and motivates her not to give up her position at work, out of various compulsions.

Woven into this story are threads of their personal life.
Her spouse is a ‘House Husband’ who sacrificed his career to support hers. “They prefer to be called stay at home dads”, she corrects Ben in the course of a conversation.
There is the scene of her household, the child, his short affair with another woman and ensuing sadness.
On the other hand there is this in-house masseuse who becomes Ben’s lover.
The scene of the massage she offers him while at work, the unexpected ‘tent effect’ it causes to his trousers, the newspaper offered by a colleague sitting next to him to ‘cover up’, with a smirk on his face, surprised me. The sheer possibility of forbidden excitement, that too in offices as depicted in these movies - is it real?
The choice of pleasant faced Rene Russo for the role of Fiona, the masseuse, makes the old couple look charming. It would have been hideous if it were the other woman who was shown to take interest in Ben. Yes, looks make all the difference.

In the massage parlor another day,
Ben: “Hmmmmmmmmm…”
Masseuse: “All I have done is take your sock off.”
Ben: “No one's done that better.”

The movie offers plenty of views of New York and San Francisco, two of my favourite cities in the USA.

It's astounding that in these movies depicting the fashion industry and the 'careers' of people therein, whether it is 'The Devil Wears Prada', or this one, 'The Intern', there isn't a hint, not a moment of the much warranted and naturally expected disillusionment about the nature of their work - that it all boils down to selling footwear, handbags, shoes and watches to people who don't really need them, that underneath all kinds of business jargon, it is just promoting consumerism.
Women in these movies 'celebrate' their 'careers', sacrifice relationships and precious life itself for these ‘careers’, pat each other on the back with tears in eyes when they have 'succeeded' in selling more shoes with the euphoria that would only befit a doctor that saved a human life.
It makes me pity the western people and their culture for being so hopelessly lost, for the complete absence of a basic perspective on materialism.

It is only decent that their sense of success and pride have a limit and beyond that limit, any pride and sense of accomplishment be knocked off by disillusionment about the essence and meaning of their actually meaningless jobs.
Euphoria in such careers, I find almost vulgar.

Lines I felt like noting down.

“Gray is the new green” (remarks someone seeing Ben doing well)

“Sitting is the new smoking”

“The best reason to carry a handkerchief is to lend it. Women cry, we carry it for them. One of the last vestiges of the chivalrous gent.”

“You are never wrong to do the right thing - Mark Twain”

“They say, you can't put the genie back in the bottle, but we can try. Right?”

Look at this use of proposition.
“Are you Happy at me?”
“I am happy at you.”

Notes to myself:

English phrase - to curry favour - behave obsequiously, fawn over

Jules (Anne Hathaway) pronounces data as daata and not as dayta.

#westerncinema