Satirizing corporate ethics and black identity ruthlessly
“Sorry to Bother You” is about a telemarketer who becomes a superstar, for a price. It’s a science fiction allegory, though the science fiction angle emerges late in the game. It’s a provocative, serious, ridiculous, screwy concoction about whiteface, cultural code-switching, AfricanAmerican identities and twisted new forms of wage slavery, beyond previously known ethical limits.
Premiering earlier this year at Sundance, the film comes from rapper and musician Boots Riley of the funk-tinged, Oaklandbased hip-hop band the Coup, who makes his feature debut here as screenwriter and director. I’ve seen it twice now, and while its climactic scenes cave in on themselves, maybe unavoidably, there’s a tremendous amount going on, in 17 different directions. Cohesion? Neatness? Neatness may count in the Neatness Olympics, but in movies, it’s overrated.
Scene One: Cassius “Cash” Green applies for a job. Green’s played by the terrific Lakeith Stanfield. The job Green seeks, and finds, requires working the phones at a generically equipped facility somewhere in Oakland, Calif. With his lover, a visual and performance artist named Detroit, Green lives in the garage of the house owned by his cash-strapped uncle (Terry Crews). Tessa Thompson plays Detroit, who also works as a streetcorner sign-twirler, and here she continues her unerring streak of late.
On his first day, Green notices an ornate elevator off to one side of the lobby. This is a VIP conveyance, used only by the highestperforming telemarketers, aka the “Power Callers.” Urged by a co-worker (Danny Glover) to adopt a “white voice,” Green suddenly discovers the secret to this job’s success.
As Green ascends the corporate ladder, his fellow workers (including Detroit) organize a telemarketers strike. The clashes between management and labor are all over the news; in “Sorry to Bother You,” the TVs are tuned either to strike news, a massively beloved game show called “I Got the S--- Kicked Out of Me!” or reports on a strange new lifetimeemployment venture called WorryFree, where workers live in hostel-like quarters at factories they’ll never leave.
While Green risks losing Detroit by crossing her picket line as a Power Caller on high, “Sorry to Bother You” eventually reveals to Green (and us) exactly what’s expected of him once he is ushered into the rarefied universe of WorryFree’s CEO, played by a feverishly charismatic Armie Hammer. These later scenes are tricky and a little bit problematic; the way certain creatures are depicted dissipates the tension rather than heightening it. Unlike Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” Riley’s film risks a fair percentage of its potential audience by making Green a conflicted, compromised figure, i.e., by letting him make his own mistakes. That same percentage of the audience may not take the story’s leap into “Island of Lost Souls” territory.
Well, enough on that. I have reservations about my reservations, because Riley offers so much on the other side of the ledger. The cinematography by Doug Emmett is unusually vibrant and expressive; so is the editing by Terel Gibson, which sharpens the edge on Riley’s nuttiest ideas. The movie wouldn’t be the same without the easy chemistry between Stanfield and Thompson, or without day players on the order of Kate Berlant’s telemarketing manager Diana DeBauchery, a memorable mixture of officiousness and lust.