THE STORY – A young intern at a prestigious literary magazine handles the difficult power dynamics of the New York literary world in the pre-#MeToo era.
THE CAST – Lily McInerny, Joshuah Melnick, Lukita Maxwell, Iris Apatow, AnnaSophia Robb, Daniel Zolghadri, Ruby Cruz, Jake Lacy, Delaney Rowe, Alex Edelman & Sasha Bhasin.
THE TEAM – Alexandra Pechman (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
Films about cutthroat and toxic office politics, particularly against women, have become a firm part of a stable of post-#MeToo explorations of previously untold truths. From “The Assistant” and “Bombshell” to even “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” we have come to expect a series of uncomfortable narratives about the misogynistic atmosphere that our culture has for decades tolerated in the workforce. Alexandra Pechman’s indie film “Magazine,” which just had its World Premiere at TIFF, is this genre’s latest entry. The first-time filmmaker’s take on this tale strays from the tone and structure of its predecessors but never coalesces into anything as memorable or as important as those.
“Magazine” opens on a young woman named Nora (a likable and well-cast Lily McInerny), who waits expectantly outside the door of Platen, the most prestigious literary magazine in New York. It is the summer of 2011, so these magazines are still relevant, and the now-familiar exposure of the most toxic practices of workplace environments had not yet come to the forefront. The email announcing her unpaid internship told her to arrive “a little after 10,” so Nora waits until her BlackBerry dings exactly at 10:05 before opening the door. She is soon placed on the couch, where she will spend most of her summer reading submissions inevitably destined for a bulging trash heap, and her alienation begins.
From the get-go, “Magazine” is at odds with its own structure. Nora is ecstatic about this job because of where it can take her, much like how working for Miranda Priestly at Runway is presented as career-defining in “The Devil Wears Prada.” The film tells you that Nora is isolated by her meaningless job and her co-interns: both the nepo baby intern and the uber-competitive intern Leonard (Daniel Zolghadri) prove to be thorns in her side. But Nora’s earnestness comes across as naïveté – did she expect that everyone at this highly successful company would be friendly and cheery? Nora eventually finds some comfort in befriending and then bedding a junior full-time associate at Platen, Thomas (Joshuah Melnick). This is, of course, a terrible idea, though it is not entirely clear that Thomas is taking advantage of her. The obvious role of the office predator belongs to magazine publisher Mickey (an amusing Jake Lacy), but he never quite pounces on Nora. Instead, he offers her valuable advice that doubles as the film’s purported principal motif: “It is very important to know when to leave the party.”
In fact, Platen throws a bunch of parties for kooky writers, most of whom are needy and insufferable. While you again expect some form of transactional situation to appear before Nora, none really comes. The only point made is that those people suck and are annoying, and Nora becomes more disillusioned. Weeks pass, and bad things come in threes. Another new intern upends Nora and her sort-of-friends, an editor quits unexpectedly, and her acerbic breakup with Thomas causes tension among the quietly whispering coworkers, all of which threaten her ability to secure a full-time paid position at the magazine.
As these extended descriptions may illustrate, “Magazine’s” plot is all over the place. Ironically, the platen is the roll in the typewriter around which you wrap the piece of paper and which serves as the backdrop against which the different keys stroke and clack. But there is no such unifying element in this Platen plot – not one character and certainly not one storyline. At most, this is a small coming-of-age story, but Nora does not really come of age during the 105-minute runtime.
The best that can be said for the film is that in her feature-length debut, writer-director Alexandra Pechman is impressively aware of her protagonist’s flaws and does not seek to simply make her sympathetic. At some point in the third act, in a bout of refreshing filmmaking honesty, Nora muses, “I fucked everything up, I think.” Nora is not an anti-hero by any means, but she is also not wholly a sympathetic character. That Pechman took on this subject matter – laced with notions of harassment, power structures, workplace politics – and has constructed a quietly complex character at its heart is a true testament to her promise as a uniquely earnest filmmaker.
But even when combined with McInerny’s pinpoint perfection in this role – she really conveys the character’s emotions perfectly – that authenticity cannot entirely save “Magazine.” In the third act, the film is about discovering friendships at work, the camaraderie among young people that inures them to difficult workplace environments, and the value of these relationships above other things – even a coveted internship – in one’s emotional education and maturation. That part of the story is perhaps the most convincing and effective, but it is almost entirely untethered to the first part of the film. The end result is a pastiche of short stories united together only by the same characters and magazine. It is not a bad film per se, and the plot shifts can even keep you more engaged than you otherwise would be, but it is also not a solid movie either.
