The Intern – is another interesting movie that presents the story of generational differences in the working world, but they can find a common ground to work together.
“Musicians never retire. They stop making music when they no longer have music in their hearts.” Do you still have music in your hearts?
The Intern
This movie was released in 2015, written and directed by Nancy Meyers and produced by Susan Farewell. This heartwarming comedy will make you laugh and cry. The story is the answer to the problems of Generation X, Y, and Z who have to work with Baby Boomers. Nowadays, the Generation Gap problem is a popular problem in the workplace.
This movie will introduce you to a 30-something boss who has to work with a 70-year-old intern. Yes, I didn’t type these two people interchangeably. The intern at this company is actually 70 years old.
Synopsis
Ben is played by Robert De Niro, a 70-year-old grandfather who became a widower after losing his wife of 42 years. He used his pension to travel until he was bored, and had plenty of time to enjoy his old age, had wonderful children and lovely grandchildren. Now he seems like a very happy grandfather, right? And who says he doesn’t?
“I’m happy, but I just feel like there’s a hole in my life that I want to fill in.”
He used to think that waking up and finding out that he didn’t have to go to work anymore was a great feeling. If you were a regular worker and you found yourself skipping work for a day, it would be a great feeling. But now he had the chance to skip work for the rest of his life, but the feeling that arose was empty. Ben came home feeling like he had nowhere to go. He still craved something.
“The question doesn’t suit you at all.”
In an attempt to fill the hole in Ben’s heart, he came across a flyer for an online clothing company looking for an elderly intern. He asked his 9-year-old nephew how to record a self-introduction video and email it in. When he got called for the interview, you can imagine the questions that companies ask these days, right? “Where did you work?” Ben used to work for a phone book company. The interviewer was a bit surprised because now he was using Google to find information. There were also questions like, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” Of course, it was funny because 10 years in the future meant Ben was 80 years old.
“I don’t know why a good person like you is here.”
Ben is chosen to be Jules Ostin’s personal intern, played by Anne Hathaway, who is the founder of the company. Her company is a typical startup company that has become successful by selling clothes online. She started everything herself and she is still young, judging from how she likes to ride her bike to work because it’s faster than walking, doesn’t like to talk to people without blinking because she doesn’t feel sincere, works fast enough to finish a meeting in 5 minutes, and she can do all the parts. Plus, she always has good ideas and thoughts. It’s no wonder that when she meets Ben, she thinks that they will never get along. In her eyes, Ben is like an old, docile man, who she got from a senior internship program that she can’t even remember when she signed up for.
“You’re not as old as you think.”
Ben has adapted well to the workplace. He has become close to the children in the office as coworkers, even though he is older than their father. Ben is well-liked by the people at work. He offers to help others with their work, tries to learn from them, learns how to use computers, email, and the company’s clothing website. He gives advice on love, and talks to the employees next to him about his favorite, now-discontinued, leather bag. Ironically, his favorite bag is now called “vintage” simply because it is old and now discontinued. He seems to get along well with everyone except Jules.
“The real 21st century dads don’t like to be called stay-at-home dads. You’re better off calling them stay-at-home dads.”
Jules’ family is characterized by the working mother and the father making breakfast, making coffee, doing the laundry, and taking care of everything from taking the kids to school to dressing up as a mermaid for their school festival. Jules’ husband used to be an excellent marketing strategist, but when they had children he quit his job so that Jules could focus on his work while he raised the kids and did the housework.
“Welcome to Facebook Generation.”
Ben and Jules’ relationship hasn’t progressed much until one night when Ben is waiting for Jules at work as usual. Jules brings him some beer and pizza and sees him trying to sign up for Facebook. It’s the first time they talk without work, and Ben’s first friend on Facebook is Jules. That night’s conversation changes something in Jules’s way of thinking.
“That man has 40 years of experience in business.”
This is what happens when someone who’s walled off starts to open up. Jules tells her best friend Ben when he walks in to report a task she’s given him. From an empty email inbox because Jules kept thinking Ben couldn’t do anything for her, Ben is now sitting at her desk outside Jules’ office so she can talk to him more easily, and he’s become one of Jules’ most trusted people.
“A successful wife, her husband will feel threatened by his masculinity.”
While Ben and Jules’s coworker-type relationship is going well, Jules discovers that her husband is cheating on her. And what has been weighing on her all along is that she is a woman who works outside the home and her husband is a stay-at-home mom, and she knows that the other kids’ moms at school are gossiping about her all the time. A successful woman like her isn’t stupid enough to blame herself, she just thinks that at least this is just a mistake her husband made, not a love that is happening between her husband and that woman.
“No one is as dedicated to your company as you are to yourself.”
Jules is about to hire someone to be the CEO of her company because she thinks that if she has more time for her family, her husband will not cheat on her. Ben sees all the dedication that Jules has given to the company. She has worked hard and her company is growing very fast. The company was able to reach its 5-year goal in 9 months. Ben cannot let her leave the company because her husband cheated on her, and Jules knows that she cannot leave her company in someone else’s hands. The person who knows her company best is herself.
What we learned from this story
The most obvious thing about this movie is the Generation Gap. You can see the corporate culture of successful startups and their owners are Gen X or Gen Y from this movie.
“We always do this when there’s something happy.”
We may have read about the corporate culture of foreign companies. They will announce happy news for all employees to stop working and celebrate together. Jules’s company is the same. She has a bell in the middle of the office and will ring the bell when happy things happen, such as when an employee went to ring the bell because of the highest number of Instagram likes they have ever received or when they praised Ben for cleaning up the messy desk that everyone hated but no one would clean it.
“You don’t have to wear a suit to work. Dress comfortably. You can still stand out without wearing a suit.”
Wearing a suit may be a sign of respect for the workplace and the colleagues we meet today. It’s a formal dress code, but it’s too much for today’s generation. Jules’s young company lets everyone dress as casually as they want, emphasizing a sense of dexterity. Of course, the next day Ben came in just a shirt and no suit, but if you look closely, you’ll see that Ben’s junior employees who are friends with him also come to ask for advice on how to dress appropriately for important occasions, and they come to work in shirts and ties, just like Ben does.
“How old is your bag? I think I’ve fallen in love with it.”
When the generation gap is closed, you will find an interesting cultural exchange. The junior employee sitting next to Ben was once surprised that Ben carried a calculator and a notebook, even though the company provided a laptop for work. Ben also did not know how to open the laptop. But as time passed, he began to ask for advice on dressing, interested in Ben’s bag because he felt it was “vintage”. In the end, we also found out that the employee went to find a bag like Ben’s to use.
“Everything was going well until they called us a women’s website.”
Even in the 21st century, fashion is still seen as a woman’s business, when men wear clothes and shop online and in stores. They don’t walk around naked. Jules also said, “This is sexist business.” Discrimination shouldn’t exist when we all wear them. Clothes didn’t even have a gender. People decide what gender they should be.
“You can do the job you have, be the person you want to be, without having to accept that it’s right for your husband to have an affair.”
In the distant past that has affected the present, women were taught to cook, do laundry, sweep the house and be men who went out to work. We have been taught this all along. But in this era, it has changed. We should be able to choose to do what we are good at. If we are good at working, we go out to work. If we are good at housework and raising children, we are the ones who stay at home. It is all about what you can do and want to do, not gender. Because no gender deserves to be betrayed in a relationship.
Conclusion
This movie is warm and gives you a lot of ideas about working because nowadays many people say that the age gap is always a problem, not just at work, but it can also happen at home.
This is because we have heard and read about it from other places without experiencing it ourselves. Or is it because we have a prejudice against it? Whether you are older or younger, we are all human beings who are working towards our intended life goals. No matter who has more or less experience in life, if everyone opens their minds, talks, and adjusts to each other, we may be able to learn a lot more from the experiences of others.
There is still a lot of knowledge that is useful to us that comes from the experiences that other people have accumulated. Some of this kind of knowledge cannot be learned from textbooks, like some examples in this movie. For example, we might get a new vintage bag from someone, or we might learn how to do math on a laptop instead of using a calculator like we are used to, or we might learn about business in a way that no textbook has ever told us before, etc.
“Life is an experiment to find the best way to produce the best result.”
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