Tropic Sprockets / Sorry to Bother You

By Ian Brockway

Boots Riley is a musician and poet. His debut film “Sorry to Bother You” has a daring boldness and spirit that is profoundly lacking in today’s cinema. Though it slightly misses the mark, its terrific verve and energy is impossible to deny. Like its spiritual counterpart, Jordan Peele’s “Get Out”, the film has an unapologetic force and a great willingness to take chances. This is one film that is a surprise from start to finish.

Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is a young black man in Oakland, California. His family is struggling. He agrees to take a telemarketing job for a company called RegalView. He secures the position but is treated dismissively. A co-worker (Danny Glover) tells him that to be a success he must use his “white” voice. After a few tries, Cassius achieves this with the voice of David Cross dubbing over Stanfield. Manager Johnny (Michael X. Sommers) becomes ecstatic. Cassius is making money, hence his name. Soon, he is promoted to an elite group as a “power-caller.”

The film has a palpable resonance precisely because it takes its time. We feel these characters and all is not as seems. Cassius is in an odd world (to say the least) but the director has the wisdom to show this environment as an utterly real one, carnivorous and biting.

In many ways, Riley is in the tradition of the surrealist director Lindsay Anderson, echoing the excellent “O, Lucky Man” (1973), but this film has a individualist bounce, both joyful and disturbing, which is unique to Riley alone.

A clear standout is Tessa Thomson as Cassius’s girlfriend, a painter. She is both a person of florid unreality and a voice of reason.

Like the groundbreaking films of the 1970s “Soylent Green,” “Rollerball” and the aforementioned Lindsay Anderson film, “Sorry to Bother You” portrays the status quo as king and as wild as it gets, we are held completely on solid ground that only just shifts ever slightly into fantasy.

Although the final scene is too obvious and unnecessary, “Sorry to Bother You” remains one of the most compelling films so far this year. It almost outdoes “Get Out” in its stirring impact.

Write Ian at [email protected]
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