New Jerusalem

I was rewinding a video, and the last moments of Mike Nichols’ Working Girl happened to be on.  Sigourney Weaver’s character has been revealed to be a fraud, and Melanie Griffith’s is the smart but loyal employee.  At the end, she’s made it.  She goes to her new office (unexpectedly, since she assumed that her new position was as secretary rather than as executive) and calls her friend played by Joan Cusack (still stuck in the secretarial pool) to let her know where she is, which news Cusack promptly announces to all, causing much excitement.  The camera is now outside Griffith’s office looking at her on the phone and starts to zoom back to reveal the surrounding office windows.  She begins to look like she’s trapped in a single cell of a honeycomb.  She becomes anonymous.  As the camera continues to zoom back, even her building becomes anonymous, dwarfed by the World Trade Center.  It’s a strangely depressing ending to the film.