Soliloquy

If there is one movie that is bound to tug at your heartstrings, it is The Intern (2015). While Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway take the floor away with their stellar showing, the support cast too need a tip of my hat, as do the writers. Director Nancy Meyers has created a narrative that is sweet, kind and generous to a fault, but one that makes all the right noises when speaking of unison in a world that has been divided as much as it is today.

The Intern starts with De Niro, playing the role of a seventy-year-old Ben Whittaker, deciding to take up the role of an intern in an online fashion store. He gets placed under an extremely cynical Hathaway, who plays the role of Jules Ostin, the founder and CEO of the organisation. How the two warm up to each other and what they learn forms the crux of the story, with hints of feminism and non-weaponisation of gender tales thrown in with aplomb.

Meyers decides that the narrative of The Intern can hold true only if she shows Ostin having agency of her own, and that is what moves the spectator in the end. Whittaker is a chivalrous, kind and sensitive old-school gentleman who is an optimist at heart, and his working under Ostin, who is anything of the adjectives mentioned above, makes for an ugly yet not embittering combination. Whittaker has the unenviable job of winning over her boss’ affections – if purely for professional purposes – and how he achieves it speaks largely of the demands made from the septuagenarian.

Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway are brilliant in The Intern

De Niro and Hathaway are brilliant on screen in The Intern; there is simply no other word to describe the rapport the duo share. The former flourishes in a role that requires him to bend over backwards and put up a positive front despite facing setback after setback while the latter thrives in her detached way of dealing with the problems life throws her way.

The culmination of the two is the focal point of The Intern, as is the narrative that sparks outrage at the notion that women must always take a step back from their professional careers to satisfy their familial responsibilities.

If The Intern manages to drive anything home, it is the idea that the onus is on both people in any relationship to make it work. While the one who becomes the breadwinner supposedly goes off the radar in search of pastures that can make the bread turn into cake, the latter cannot reek in distaste at what has been thrown at them, especially if it has come through their own volition.

That women can achieve success in their profession and not have to sacrifice domestic pride for the same is a concept that should have been set in stone by now already. Since it is not, The Intern is as good a watch as any to drive home the point.

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