July 13, 2018 3 min to read

Sorry to Bother You

Sorry to Bother You is an endlessly creative piece of satire - and doesn't relent with it's message or its absurdity.

by Zach Saul

Sorry to Bother You is and endlessly creative piece of satire - and doesn’t relent with it’s message or its absurdity. Cassius (Lakieth Stanfield) is a struggling but ambitious young black man who falls into opportunity after opportunity by pandering to white people. One of the funniest and oddly poigniant scenes in the movie features Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) attempting to “rap” against his will to a room full of which white people at their request. After two cringeworty rhymes Stanfield begins shouting “n* shit, n* shit, n* shit, n* n* n* shit” to which the room errupts in applause. Afterwards, the same white women who had been blankly staring in disgust looed at Cassius with lust and admiration in an instant.

On the surface this is a riddiculous-sounding premise, but Director Boots Riley does something ingenious: he grounds it in a mundane un-spectacular reality, a telemarketing firm. It has the absurdist trappings of movies like The Big Lebowski but also the ordinary sensibility of movies like The Informant or Office Space. The reason I think the setting is so important to Sorry to Bother You’s cocktail is because Riley is delivering a pretty heavy handed message. However, to Riley’s credit it never feel that way. For a movie that’s wants to explore class and race, I never felt like Riley’s film was pointing fingers. For example, when we see the most popular show “I just got the shit kicked out of me”, we can aknowledge the paralells so some of the highly intellectual programming on MTV2, and understand the personified effect media can have on marginalized groups.

It’s unsettlng to me that Riley’s universe doesn’t feel that far removed from the truth, and speaks to how effective his satire was. Although telemarketers desks don’t fall through the ceilings into whatever room the caller is sitting in (one of many brilliant visual devices Riley uses), we do live in a world where pandering to those in power is a clear path to success. For Cassius and Detroit (Tessa Thompson) this causes a very interesting identity crisis, where both are forced to weigh their ambition against their loyaly and decide what each means in the hypocritical world they inhabit. Detroit (Thompson) is undoubtedly more sucesfull in navigating these issues - but isn’t immune to the same temptations, and even does a performance where she reads movie lines in her white voice (Lily James) while an audience throws lambs blood and bullets at her. Cassius then interrupts the show to ask “why would you subject yourself to this?”. She replies that it’s all part of the show, but the subtext is her asking Cassius “how can you feel indignation for me and not the thousands of slave laborers you’re selling off on your telemarketing calls?” As a white male, there’s a certain aspect of that identity struggle I won’t ever understand in the exact same what black men do, but I thought Cassius’ chartacter felt more genuine then a majoirty of white male protagnists in movies - thanks to a brilliant performance from Lakieth Stanfield.

The Good: Sorry to Bother You is endlessly creative, relentlessly poigniant, and has a naritive voice that feels fresher than anything i’ve seen in several years. The writing is outstanding, and the absurdity works towards the movie’s message instead of against it (a trap very few satirical comedies navigate successfully). On the surface the movie is about class and race, but what will elevates it into a higher tier is it’s commentary on identity. It’s also a visually iconic movie in the same way The Royal Tennanbaums was, and I can absolutely imagine seeing Detroit, or Cassius haloween costumes with “murder murder murder” earrings a year from now.

The Bad: There isn’t much to complain about in Sorry to Bother You but moviegoers expecting a pure comedy might be dissapointed. Not all of the jokes land - but that’s part of the absurdist fun.