Review of Sorry to Bother You (2018) by Bertaut1 — 22 Dec 2018

A sharp satire that runs a little too long and takes a bizarre left-turn that will alienate many.

A paean to the proletariat. A pro-union battle cry. An ideological evisceration of late capitalism. A deconstruction of corporate greed and the concomitant commercialisation of self-worth. A critique of identity politics. An allegory of institutional racism in big business. A lampooning of Silicon Valley bro culture. Sorry to Bother You, the debut feature of writer/director Boots Riley, is all this, and more. A black comedy/Juvenalian satire/science fiction/horror/magic realist/allegorical character study, it's impossible to classify, examining labour relations, wage issues, worker solidarity, unionism, mass media, and the dangers of weighing corporate advancement against personal integrity. Although the bizarre left-turn at the end of the second act will surely alienate many, the deconstruction and comic appropriation of code-switching results in a film that is constantly inventive, highly confrontational, and extremely funny.

Set in Oakland in an "alternate present", Cash Green (LaKeith Stanfield) is a telemarketer working for RegalView, who, upon discovering his "white voice", rises to the top of the company's food chain. Gradually, however, he learns that RegalView is selling slave labour to WorryFree, a company which offers food and lodging in exchange for a lifetime labour contract with no wages. Torn between exposing WorryFree and his substantial earnings, Cash's dilemma is exacerbated when WorryFree CEO, Steve Lift (a spectacular Armie Hammer) offers him a $1 million a year contract.

At its heart, Sorry to Bother is an anti-corporate, proletarian rally cry, something with which Riley has been engaged for decades as lead vocalist for The Coup and Sweet Sweeper Social Club.

One of the easiest ways to parse the film is to approach it as a parable about selling out, equal parts polemic and acknowledgement that it's next to impossible not to sell out in some way. RegalView and WorryFree exist in an economic system built upon impoverishing the many for the benefit of the few, with Riley exposing the importance of a poverty line for the continued functioning of late capitalism. Within such a system, he suggests, it's exceptionally difficult for African Americans to succeed unless they are willing to code-switch. In this sense, although the concept of "white voice" does have a practical function within the narrative, its most salient characteristic is as an object of allegorical satire, a hyperbolic caricature of what African Americans need to do to survive in the Caucasian bro-culture corporate ranks of Silicon Valley.

An especially interesting aesthetic device is how white voice is handled - rather than having the actors simply speak in a different voice, Riley instead has the actors' voices overdubbed. However, the lip syncing is, presumably intentionally, far from perfect, with the voice not quite aligning with the actors' mouths. This throws the scenes "off" ever so slightly, creating an extra layer of surreality, and highlighting just how absurd the whole thing is, drawing attention to the lengths these people have to go to achieve real success.

The film's other big aesthetic innovation is having Cash plunge (not especially gracefully) into the living room of the people he calls, desk and all. Obviously, this draws attention to the level of intrusion with which most people greet telemarketers, but, at least in the early stages, it also highlights Cash's own discomfit at being the intruder, seen most clearly when he drops in on a couple having sex.

Of course, it isn't all perfect. The wildly unexpected plot twist at the end of the second act will be too much for some people. There's also a mid-credit scene that serves as a kind of epilogue that I believe was a re-shoot when test audiences found the initial ending too abrupt. For me, however, it doesn't entirely work, and I would have much preferred the original, darker, ending.

Sorry to Bother You is as timely and relevant as it is funny and irreverent. Exploring the intersection between race and economics from a satirical point-of-view, the film both condemns and sympathises with those who choose to sell-out in some way so as to climb the ladder of success. Now in his late-40s, Riley is a veteran political protestor, a Chomsky-literate agitator, who is here positing that the most significant divide in the US isn't between white and black, it's between those with money and those without. Suggesting that the desire to cross this divide can lead to a herd mentality, the film argues that the labour force must never forget their collective strength, and must never turn on one another, as in such a situation, management will use workers like horses.