In my movie reviews, I usually try to avoid any spoilers that are not in the trailer or the first half hour of the movie. However, I may need to go a little further than that to describe this movie at all. I will not spoil the ending. You can watch the trailer at the end of this post.
Sorry to Bother You is directed by Boots Riley and stars Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, and Armie Hammer.
Boots Riley, of the rap/soul/funk/punk group the Coup, makes his directorial debut with Sorry to Bother You, an absurdist anti-capitalist satire perfectly timed for our society's current dilemmas. It seems to be influenced by films like Office Space, Brazil and Idiocracy. It even features Idiocracy's Terry Crews in a small role. It also reminds me a bit of novels like Company by Max Barry and The Sell Out by Paul Beatty. It feels like a novel, which director Boots Riley also observed on a recent WTF interview.
I must warn that the trailer does not really prepare you for this movie at all. It starts off with this pretty basic story about a black man, Cassius "Cash" Green (Stanfield), who is struggling financially and takes a job as a telemarketer. His co-worker (Glover) tells him the secret to selling things is to use his "white voice." With his white voice (voiced by David Cross) he becomes an extremely successful salesman, quickly getting promoted to an upstairs office as a power seller. Now from here the film takes a turn into deeper reaches of absurdity and a bit of magical realism. Incorporating elements of science fiction may turn off some viewers. All I can say is just roll with it and enjoy the ride because this movie has a lot to say. Is it absurd? Yes, but it is quite rational given our current economic and political trajectories.
Even early parts are a little surreal as Riley creatively depicts the invasiveness of a telemarketer by showing Green's desk literally crashing through the ceiling into people's homes and interrupting their privacy. One scene shows him uncomfortably close to someone using the toilet.
Paralleling Green's story are news stories, TV commercials and billboards for Worry Free, a company that promises a lifetime of job security, food and living quarters. The dorm apartment and cafeteria look uncannily like a prison with a veneer of luxury that anybody should be able to see as a sugarcoated version of slavery. Since they sign a lifetime contract and receive no pay for their work, it essentially is slavery, indentured servitude or basically like prison. An undercover group known as left-eyes protest against Worry Free, covering their billboards with graffiti exposing the lies.
Look, I don't think it's any spoiler to say what the promotion to power seller entails. It's pretty obvious where it's going with this, selling both weapons to foreign governments as well as Worry Free's labor to corporations. But it goes even further than that, which I will not reveal here. What this movie asks is at what price will one sell out and at what cost will one finally realize they have basically sold out their own sense of humanity?
When someone professes a love of free markets, do they take it to the conclusion they go to in this film? Now, this film is firmly anti-capitalist, and it takes it to absurd lengths to demonstrate how if left unchecked it can lead to true horrors. With disparities in wealth, what would prevent coercive exploitative contracts?
The film's "white voice" is one of the things that has stood out in the advertising. While this is an obvious thing that people of color may relate to, it makes a point of this also being a thing white people may use unknowingly. It's an idea, that one lives an ideal life and doesn't even care about making the sale. It's a voice of the actor in every commercial, a person who is living the American dream and has it all. Everybody puts on some kind of false front to sell themselves in a job interview. This even begins with a job interview where Green makes up complete lies. This lie continues on every job. How often do we stop and question whether we actually are doing ethically and morally responsible acts in our jobs? The general consensus seems to be that making money is the main goal in life. But like Green is looking for meaning in life, do we all kind of lose sight of this when finding financial success? Is life meaningful if your job makes you money at somebody else's expense? I would like to think that one could lead a successful life without harming others. I don't think success means money. It perhaps means not having to worry about it as much. However this may also mean learning to live within lesser means. It could be worth having less to find happiness.
Alright this may be getting off track. I love a movie that makes me think. I love the anti-corporate anti-racist anti-classist angle in this film. I love that it takes a dive into absurdity. Maybe if you're an economic capitalist you won't like it. Maybe you won't like when it goes into science fiction territory. I hope people at least give it a shot. I feel this will disappear from theaters but quickly gain a cult following on digital platforms. I'm not going to give it a rating as I can just say it's easily my favorite film of the year so far.
This trailer is the property of Annapurna Pictures
