"The Apartment" Review: A Charming, Unique Rom-Com

Billy Wilder's 1960 Best Picture winner is flawed, but its lessons are more important than ever.

October 8, 2024

On November 29, 2017, NBC announced the termination of longtime news anchor Matt Lauer over sexual harassment allegations. It was part of a tidal wave of accusations against big names in the news and entertainment industries, popularly known as the #MeToo movement. Subsequent revelations detailed an extensive history of coverups by the network, who were aware of allegations dating back to 2000.

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The web of perversion was complex enough that Ronan Farrow reported in his 2019 book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators that Harvey Weinstein, the poster child of #MeToo, had exploited his knowledge of Lauer’s indiscretions to strong-arm NBC into keeping hush about his own crimes.

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Lauer lacked the pedigree of Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw, but he was a long-tenured voice on one of the country's largest networks. Despite the relative secrecy of their indecency, Hollywood heavyweights' impurity was not shocking to the public. Long had we joked about talentless, attractive performers we theorized traded sex for parts. We may have gotten so accustomed to the jesting that the reality got lost in the shuffle, but it was there nonetheless.

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But something about Lauer's corruption struck a different chord, even for those who had never warmed to him. We had been asking whether such violations were isolated incidents or common practice. The world answered; the question now was something else. We presumed any man with power would exploit it, that immorality was rampant amongst those seemingly immune to its consequences. As such, we wondered: is everything a product of that power, or just an effect of indecent men gaining the necessary influence to realize their despicable ambitions? Do we welcome this iniquity by failing to look inside ourselves enough to stand for what's right, or can no amount of good intentions prevent wrongdoing?

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The Apartment is the story of CC “Bud” Baxter, an office worker for a New York City insurance company ascending the corporate ladder by letting executives use his flat for their extramarital rendezvous. As he falls for the building’s elevator operator, Fran, who's seeing big boss, Mr. Sheldrake, he must weigh chasing his dreams against the realization that getting what you want is not always what it seems.

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It's a typical idea, but it's handled with enough maturity to make it equally accessible and distant. People do not often go so far to secure a promotion or fall into dalliances with married people. Still, the sentiment behind these pursuits is enough to make us understand the characters we follow, and The Apartment understands that. It knows that we dive headfirst into ideas that seem prudent in the moment but spin out of control before we know what hits us. It knows that we brown-nose people less moral than ourselves to get what we deserve on merit. It knows that we give our best effort and that the quest for something more leads us down paths we never anticipated but get so consumed by that we don't see the damage they cause.

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Unfortunately, it fails to know these things with enough integrity to justify how dreary it becomes.

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Fran’s suicide attempt is a cheap means of eliciting our sympathy for an undeserving character. The Apartment has something to say about the unhealthy attachments and the resulting negative consequences. It taps into the self-sabotage whose damage becomes cyclical the more we struggle to understand its root cause and fall into the pattern it creates. We all understand the concept of her experiences, but we cannot ignore the fact that she’s brought it on herself. Without being consistently impartial, The Apartment simultaneously delegitimizes its higher drama and undermines its insight. It becomes an impressive technical screenplay but loses sight of what makes a film worth watching.

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It justifies its more minute events by foreshadowing their existence or establishing their importance, whether it be alluding to Bud’s prior suicidal tendencies or his impending announcement of his intention to court Fran, but fails to recognize that simply because you make something known does not mean that you made it worth our while. The Apartment structures itself well as a story that remains aware of its general design but is unreliable in execution, sometimes feeling like two stories stitched together by its leads’ charm.

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But The Apartment shines when it does not force itself into boxes without compromising a sense of integrity. It challenges us to think outside the box, refusing to humanize Bud traditionally before letting us into the seedy world of corporate ambition. He lends his home for extramarital dalliances, thus indirectly building his happiness on the back of other people’s pain. Thankfully, the film never excuses this decision: it only makes it a part of who Bud is and how we perceive him.

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People are multidimensional, and no one person or circumstance can inspire every facet of our individualism to shine through. Contemplative will attract intellectual, impulsive will attract hyperactive, reserved will attract measured, and so on. The more we embrace life, the more our true selves will emerge. But despite how well we can know ourselves, other people cannot possess that same knowledge. We live inside our heads and hearts every day. Regardless of the circumstances, we know our intentions. The Apartment succeeds by conjoining us to our protagonists, allowing us to see them fully. It does not shield us from their impropriety to make them more palatable, but it also understands that flaws do not render someone disreputable. After all, we like ourselves. The Apartment banks on our self-belief, trusting us to buy into its presentation, but it also knows how to structure itself so that investment pays dividends.

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It's why Bud’s word vomit as he attempts to convince Fran to join him at the theater warrants her acceptance. Tradition says such behavior is off-putting, but outside conventional wisdom, we know that sometimes earnestness is charming and that a cavalier existence can find us in bed with a married man as readily as on a date with someone we would not expect. It is why the movie understands us well enough to impact us during its peak perceptiveness.

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It is also why Fran’s admission that you shouldn’t wear mascara when you date a married man is so polarizing. We acknowledge the truth of her statement and the degree to which she’s buried herself in sorrow, but we also cannot bring ourselves to share her pain. Despite the dimensionality, it has not earned enough from us to entirely separate character from action, especially considering the movie all but admits this by including the suicide attempt in the first place.

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Thus, The Apartment's cheery conclusion leaves us with whiplash because the film has gone from refreshing realism to insincere melodrama. But when it’s simply embracing the realities of relationships and our propensity for indecency, it hits at something true about how we relate to one another. Sheldrake clings to Fran when affection comes easily, but the truth always breaks free. As Bud calls him after she overdoses on sleeping pills, he cannot bring himself to care. He is a big business employee, furthering not only the financial prosperity of his company but the sordid hedonism of the men who find themselves in positions of authority. It is no coincidence that the men most willing to engage in disreputable behavior are most likely to ascend the corporate ladder; The Apartment knows the two are not mutually exclusive. In those moments, it is a great film.

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Sadly, it also jerks us the other way and thus fails to uphold itself thematically because it substitutes minimalist substance for shock value. But in the end, The Apartment defies genre by portraying a reality of life often forgotten by films: life cannot be quantified or defined by genre. By (mostly) remembering that, it effectively explores many typical situations and ideas. It contains a wealth of wisdom that applies just as much to a late-night date as a corporate office. It helps us realize that the Sheldrakes, Matt Lauers, and Harvey Weinsteins of the world are not products of their environment but men who find avenues that let opportunism and deviancy flourish. It helps us see that while we can never fix another and thus repair the world, we can do the little things that matter for ourselves. It does not reach its full potential, but The Apartment crams a lot of heart into the story of two troubled people, the day-to-day grind of ascending to a place that rarely proves worth it, and the four walls of Bud's tiny New York City apartment.