The Intern (2015)
An Ode To The Greatest Generation Of Humans To Have Ever Lived
I stumbled across a 4-minute clip of a movie starring the evergreen, Robert DeNiro, and the stunning, Anne Hathaway. Just like one of those urges, I felt like spending my afternoon watching the movie today, and so I did. The movie is about a retired old man, Ben Whittaker (Robert DeNiro), and a young Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway).
Let's talk about Jules first.
Jules is a young woman in her late-20s or early-30s. She's a Founder and CEO of a flourishing e-commerce platform. She's married and has a 4-year old daughter. Her life is extremely fast-paced. She hardly eats. Hardly sleeps. She's dedicated to the brand she has created. She's a micromanager. Takes customer complaints personally every now and then. Her company is casual. There are no separate cabins for anyone. Everyone works on the floor. It's a hip workplaces, where ideas, and not formalities, are bounced off of each other's heads. She's a sperg. She loves her work.
Woman of that kind is a creation of the modern lifestyle -- education, workplace, diet. Such women are not wife or mom material. They just don't have it in them. They're amazing people, but not the one you'd want to be your kids' mother. This shows later in the movie when it's found that her husband is having an affair. Jules realises that she's not fit to fill the role of wife in a man's life, and regrets her life choices, but it ends well, with her husband realising his mistake, and they getting together.
A real-life example of this is Erin Callan -- the former Chief Executive of Lehmann Brothers prior to their bankruptcy in 2008. She was extremely smart, and super talented in her work. She was one of the few people from Wall Street who saw the financial crisis come from very far. She warned her peers at Lehmann many times, that they're treading a thin line, but no one listened to her. She was fired to make a desirable media position. Wall Street life got to her. Rumours were there that her family life was getting badly affected as well. So, after the Lehmann bankruptcy, she left investment banking completely, hasn't made any media appearance since then, and leads a secluded life with her husband and kids. Probably, the makers of this film did carve out Jules' character from Erin Callan.
Now, let's come to Ben Whittaker, played by the one and the only, Robert DeNiro.
Ben is a retired old man, aged 70. His wife is dead. And he has all the free time in the world in his hand. During the first few months of his retirement, he spends his time travelling around the world. But, everytime he returns from a trip, he feels an uneasiness and incompleteness in his life. He visits his son, and spends time with his family and grandkid, but Americans aren't longhoused, so he doesn't rely too much on them. He does yoga, painting, singing, every single activity in everyone's hobby list, yet the feeling of incompleteness doesn't leave him. One day in the market he sees an advertisement of a “senior intern program,” wherein retired men and women above 65 can apply in that program, and will be assigned a basic job. Ben is assigned to work as a personal attaché of Jules Ostin.
Jules at first doesn't like the idea of an old man working for her as she believes the generational mismatch will be too much. Jules at first tries to avoid Ben, and keeps him away from work as much possible. After a couple of days of idle sitting in the office, Ben decides he'll do something on his own. He starts helping everyone in the office -- from work to their personal lives by giving them small life lessons. There's a desk in the office that's a mess, which no one cleans, which bothers Jules too much. Ben one day shows up early and cleans the desk, earning everyone's claps and admiration. Jules' manager tells her that Ben is loved by everyone in the office.
The movie really is about a man from an older generation helping the young technocratic generation with timeless wisdom. This is a lesson on what old people contribute to society. They don't contribute by imposing their worldview, and a non existent past life, to them. They help the youth by giving inputs by being observant, by providing wisdom that no Google or chatGPT can ever provide.
Ben helps a guy sort out his relationship with his girlfriend, by telling him that sending messages and calls don't help, and that he should go to his girlfriend and talk to her personally. He helps them in dressing. In being presentable. In one scene, Jules says she feels hungry. Ben asks her to bring her food, but she says she has a meeting and doesn't wanna eat. Ben then brings her a chicken soup to eat in the car. This is the best figure of speech on how old men should be. They shouldn't force or scold anyone to do anything, just offer them an alternative. Throughout the movie, Ben helps Jules in her office and workplace in little tiny things. He leads by example. His style and sense of being entices a generation of young New Yorkers on what organisation looks like. He wears a suit everyday. Carries a briefcase. Carries handkerchief. Carries his own robe while travelling.
Ben is a professional. He knows how to behave in a professional workplace, something Indians never learnt. Be it college or workplace or Facebook, everyone in India wants to establish personal relations from the get go. Bosses and professors behave like moms and dads and even say it, “You all are like my kids.” I feel like going, “exclude me.” Irony is, this leads to Indian institutions being the most toxic cesspools in the world, while professionals like Ben actually end up winning fatherly respect from everyone, because with professionalism comes the concept of limitations and boundaries. Only couples have the emotional right to do anything they want with each other. Literally and figuratively. Every other human relationship sustains through boundaries, which Indians don't understand. A longhouse where everyone just wants to intrude in everything.
A scene perfectly shows the difference between the old and the youth. Jules accidentally sends an insulting email to her mom, which she has to delete before her mom sees it. She asks her team to hack her mom's email. They're unable to. Ben, then, suggests, they break into her mom's house and steal the laptop. When faced with a problem, the youth, including me, open their laptop and start typing. The old lace their boots, get their tools, and act. This is so like my grandfather. Everytime there's a problem in house, be it literally anything, me and my uncle would start making calls and texts to get someone to sort it out. My grandfather would scramble through his bag of tools and start fixing it. Be it a cracked wall or a leaky faucet or some electricity problem.
In one scene, Ben lays the most perfect statement on what the old should do with the youth. He was telling a young guy the importance of carrying a handkerchief. He says you carry the hanky not for yourself, but for others, to lend. This is a wisdom for the ages. The old with their experience and knowledge should lend their hand, not impose or suppress. Lend. Be it a handkerchief or relationship advice or fashion advice or food advice. Lead by example. The old should have a lifestyle and personality that everyone wants to follow on their own, like they all want to follow Ben.
Cinematography of the movie is fantastic. Everytime Ben lays his wisdom on every small thing, the camera shifts to a young character whose expressions are that of admiration and respect for a people that doesn't exist anymore. It also shows a side of New York, that most movies don't show, but is actually real. Most movies show New York, or any other city, as places of decadence degeneracy. Those are things of the fringe. In larger reality, rot is much more ubiquitous in villages, and cities are the centres of human excellence. And New York is the wealthiest city in history. In the movie, there are dialogues between Jules and others where Jules slams the feminist rhetoric and the gynocentric world, and embraces the problems men face in regards to the crisis of masculinity. Yeah, Hollywood really did make a movie like this.
When Ben shares the story of his beloved late wife, it's the perfect example of how the excellence of femininity is in softness, resilience and nurturing, and not in toughness and roughness and girlbossing. Indians should watch this movie to understand how glorious life outside the longhouse is. How people love, live, and grow old in a society where human life is truly valued, not just verbally diarrhoea-ed. Americans should watch this movie to realise what a glorious society they burnt to the ground with their egalitarian liberal garbage of wokeism.
Ben is the classic old school American -- the greatest generation of human beings to have ever lived. This is the generation that won the World Wars. Defeated Nazism. Created the wealthiest, most prosperous nation in the history of mankind. Unleashed amazing creativity and intelligence in the world. Won the Cold War on the back of their higher ideals. Defeated Communism. The harbringers of the American Dream. This movie is an ode to them, for they don't make them like them anymore.