We're living in deeply cynical times, and deeply cynical times call for deeply cynical movies. Boots Riley's absurdly mystifying, art-pop-critique debut film "Sorry To Bother You" feels as if it could've been conjured up during any fraught post-civil rights era — the '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s, but is especially timely now. And under the cruel tutelage of the Trump administration's domestic and foreign policies, which have rolled back legal protections for immigrants, laborers, and the soon-to-be incarcerated, the impoverished and marginalized masses who're attacked and harangued by isolationist (ugly, nationalist) fever dreams have now found an ally in protest cinema. Which, lets face it, was constrained until 2017's "Get Out" — a confluence of unlucky crises that included Black Lives Matter, Trump's succession of Obama, and a dearth of sharp, impertinent work able to tackle diverse matters of contention; school shootings, racial oppression, and an unchecked prison industrial complex. Call out the last affair for what it is, the new 'Jim Crow' or 'high-tech slave trade,' demands a harsher cultural critique than what most of Hollywood cares to stomach on screen. That these farcical and satirical "magical surrealism" monikers afforded to international filmmakers such as Jeunet, Sorrentino, and Del Toro are now squarely in the hands of black artists like Peele, the brothers Glover, and now Riley, is a testament to the pioneering shows spawned in his Sundance labs' fluke incubation period: "Atlanta," "Dear White People," "Blackish," "Key & Peele," "Empire," "The Chi," and "Insecure."
"S.T.B.Y." isn't solely concerned with the plight of the overworked and underpaid, but with the rapacious racism which abounds in every facet of our for-profit prison structural juggernaut. It is not merely presented in Riley's allegory as an Ayn Rand-ian solution to economic and racial destitution, but squares the Republican party's decades-long crusade against the so-called welfare "nanny state." Bolstered by the adage that here in America, everyone who wants to become rich, will be rich, our society has corroded to the wealth and excesses festering on the crippled bodies of a disposable workforce — one which can only be rectified, evidently, by the "the white voice" (a conscious shift in tone used to 'code-switch' a minority's way to the top; keeping them alive during a traffic stop; or to survive by blending in). Cassius Green (played by mild-mannered Lakeith Stanfield), code-switches his way up the corporate ladder so artfully and expeditiously that before long he's seen crossing his company's picket line in a deluxe Maserati — unfazed by the throngs of protestors below him who're unable to modify their mannerisms and attitudes long enough to qualify as brown-nosing chameleons. Not only does Cassius disregard his fellow penny-pinching brethren, he transforms into something wholly unrecognizable... turning against his own morality in pursuit of some hollow, fulgent fantasy. Extravagant clothes, an upscale $100k car, and ceasing judgment from his family, friends and loved ones holds absolute sway over Green, due in part to the reality that everyone he cares for is obsessed with capitalism — whether to undermine it, overthrow it, or give into it…
Without giving a sizable portion of the film's subtext away, there is a tremendous amount of lighthearted fun peppered through Riley's work, enough to make his indomitable medicine go down, with the sparsest of melancholic angst to keep audiences glued to the edge of their seats. Cassius is likable and disagreeable, but only to a near-calamitous fault, in much the same way many of us are— hell, give somebody a sense of purpose and meaning on a silver platter and see how quickly they turn against their own scruples. But what makes "S.T.B.Y." ultimately chilling as a parable for modern day American life is how personally it provokes our conscious and unconscious desires about money. After all, how might we react to crossing a picket line if our very livelihood depended on us not committing the act? Maybe it's because as brainwashed Yankees, our metric for success is tangled up in the subjugation of others, where a word like "socialist" is hurled at a working class community like a treasonous insult; something uniquely un-American and antithetical to our way of being. Cassius understands understands that he and he alone is responsible for his successes and failures, yet these isolationist bents, which have infected so many sectors of modern day politicking, eventually yield an 'aha' Sophie's Choice for this starry-eyed protagonist — one which imbues in him the notion that self-pity is worthier than self-resignation, and that by choosing to do the right thing, he still can, and probably will, lose. Does that mean he should or shouldn't do it? The answer lies in his perspective.
"SORRY TO BOTHER YOU" a.k.a. “Horsemen of the Apopcalypse” Rated R. 1 hour 45 minutes.
