BY BLUE KAUFMAN
While I still think it works better as a drama rather than a romantic comedy, director Billy Wilder is careful to shed just enough light on The Apartment to keep its bleakness from overwhelming the film. Featuring a genuine suicide attempt and a grim take on the loneliness that often accompanies life in a big city, The Apartment is a film that is just as fresh today as it was 53 years ago.
Released in 1960, the story follows CC Baxter (John Lemmon), a monotonous bachelor. He’s just an anonymous worker at an insurance firm with 31,259 employees. Each day he rides the elevator to the 19th floor, finds his small cubicle-working desk, and punches numbers on a keyboard. It’s not a bad life though, really. Baxter is simply caught up in an endless routine, unable to truly comprehend how lost he is among the swarm of computers around him.
The one thing that sets Baxter apart is his apartment. In an attempt to rise in the company, Baxter gives his executives the key to his place, letting them use it as a meeting place for their personal lives (we never find out how this situation began). To his coworkers, that’s all he is: a key. He is the access to a room- a commodity to be exploited rather than a person to be considered. Later on, when Baxter is no longer able to provide them with this luxury, his bosses are quick to sell him out stating “what is Baxter to us”?
Worse though, is the way Baxter deals with this and the complications that inherently accompany his situation. He is clearly annoyed yet prolongs his predicament in an attempt to please everyone. Living a double life, he is a fraud to his neighbors and a pushover to his so called friends. It comes to the point where even Baxter doesn’t know who he is himself.
I believe that main theme and thesis of The Apartment emerges when Baxter’s neighbor tells him with exasperation “to grow up, to be a mensch- a human being”
It’s true. In The Apartment and in life in general, compassion is scarce and humanity totters on the fringes of reality. It’s even apparent with Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator girl and object of affection for several employees. On the surface they claim to adore her but their actions say something different; she is just an item to be played with, a trophy to be won. Kubelik knows this but is unable to stand up for herself. She is the type of women who likes to carry a broken mirror in her purse because it reflects the way she feels. Buried under an avalanche of hopelessness, she is happy to oblige to almost anything they want.
Yes, it’s a pretty grim view on life.Yet I never once felt weighed down by all the harsh topics. Remarkably, the actors in The Apartment do such a great job with their characters that they are able to make it into more of a dark comedy. As Baxter’s problems build, ironies nestle their way into the crevices of the film and little quirks add brightness to the landscape.
It would be a crime to underestimate how influential a film like The Apartment has been to modern cinema. CC Baxter’s character alone has inspired generations of disheartened protagonists such as Kevin Spacey’s role in American Beauty and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. Setting itself apart(ment) from the rest, The Apartment is just as crucial to movies now as it ever has been before.
