Sons of Get Out carve path at Sundance
PARK CITY, UTAH— They could have just kept on cloning Get Out, the horrifically smart racial satire that lit up last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
And you could hardly have blamed anybody for doing so, since Jordan Peele’s directorial debut has struck gold at the box office and also at awards ceremonies, with Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director in hand.
But at Sundance 2018, at least, the spiritual progeny of Get Out are doing their own thing, which is more than just a black-and-white thing.
Two of the most buzz-worthy films premiering here — Boots Riley’s social satire Sorry to Bother You and Sebastián Silva’s observational drama Tyrel — explore many of the same racial stereotypes and fears as Peele’s film, adding such easy generic targets as reality TV and frat-boy culture.
But as rapper and filmmaker Riley explains in his director’s statement, he’s painting on the biggest canvas possible: “I’m drawn to absurdity, humour and the fantastical in art, as their presence often points out the contradictions of our reality.”
Riley sets Sorry to Bother You in an alternate present-day version of Oakland, Calif., where his hero Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield, also seen in Get Out) is struggling to earn a buck. He’s about to be evicted from the garage apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a sloganeering artist and street performer.
Cassius lands a gig as a telemarketer, where being different is severely frowned upon: the corporate motto is “Stick to the Script” or S.T.T.S. for short. But he finds himself unable to sell people stuff they don’t really want, until an older co-worker advises him to “use your white voice” to make the pitches.
Bingo! Cassius starts ringing up the sales, and he’s promoted upstairs to a higher level of telemarketing, where a golden elevator leads to status and affluence. But success has a price: his former co-workers and girlfriend accuse him of selling out, and he’s about to learn the master plan of a company called WorryFree, whose CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) is a guy he really needs to worry about.
Writer/director Riley, lead vocalist for hip-hop group the Coup, comes from a background of repertory theatre and political activism. He brings all of that to his screenplay for Sorry to Bother You — and also some weird sci-fi.
The story occasionally meanders and the jokes don’t always land, but there’s an energy and creativity to the film that reminds me of early Spike Lee movies. Sorry to Bother You looks to have a promising future heading out of Sundance — Riley apologized to the audience prior to Monday’s 8:30 a.m. screening that he likely couldn’t do a Q&A afterward, because he was in the midst of working out a distribution deal.
True to his improv nature, though, Riley encouraged people to stop him on the street of Park City anytime this week and “you can Q&A me there.”
Sundance veteran Silva is up to something far more subtle with Tyrel, which is titled for the nickname of its anxious protagonist Tyler, played by Mudbound’s Jason Mitchell. It also stars Get Out’s Caleb Landry Jones, but don’t let that fool you.
Tyler’s on a boys’ getaway weekend at a cabin in the Catskills of New York state. He’s happy to get out of NYC to celebrate the birthday of a carouser named Pete (Jones).
What Tyler didn’t reckon on was being stuck in “Whitesville.”
He’s the only Black guy in a cabin of white dudes, ones who drink constantly, play dumb (and offensive) word games and sing along to records of R.E.M., the whitest band ever. The occasion is set during the weekend of Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president, which adds another layer of comment and tension.
Tyler feels seriously out of place, especially when a rowdy late arrival, played by Michael Cera, starts trying to prove how “street” he is.
What makes the film interesting is not where it goes, which isn’t anyplace you’d necessarily expect. In fact, Tyrel is about subverting expectations because you can’t easily read the intentions and motivations of the characters, especially Tyler.
To borrow a line from a guy in Sorry to Bother You, nobody in either of these two films is necessarily out to stir up trouble, they’re just trying to make people think.
“Trouble’s already there,” he says. “It’s just how folks fix it.” Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic. His column usually runs Fridays.