![]() ![]() The images presented in the last act of the film, while truly shocking and perverse, are yet another indicator that Riley has spent just as much time thinking about the statements made by visual elements of the film as the ones made in the narrative. Like Being John Malkovich, another fantastical satire that explores corporate malaise (albeit on the late-'90s side of the recession), Sorry to Bother You descends into the ludicrous-and it goes way deeper than anyone could imagine. But, especially in a comedy, it’s special when you get close-lined by a cut. An editing style that draws attention to itself in this way is not simply good in and of itself. Towards the ending, there is an unexpected cut to black that was so surprising that it had the audience in my theater vocally astounded. Editing is just as important for the visual medium of cinema as anything, and there are cuts in Riley’s film so hard, and so visceral, that you will be rollicked like a Coney Island roller coaster on a dewey afternoon. Aside from the acting, writing, or maybe the soundtrack, the general public isn’t interested in the mechanics of filmmaking like perhaps they once were. But we don’t really leave the movies talking about those qualities anymore. ![]() In the early days of cinema, when trailblazers like Georges Méliès and Charlie Chaplin were quite literally creating the language of film as we know it today, these elements were extremely important to note, and easier to recognize, because a new formal quality was being introduced with each new entry into the young medium. College film professors love to talk about the formal elements of cinema, basically implying, the way a film’s sound, imagery, and editing engage with each other to compose a piece as a whole. The editing in Sorry to Bother You is singularly deafening as well. For better or worse, the burdensome fingerprints of the blockbuster machine are nowhere to be found on Sorry t o Bother You, allowing for Riley and cinematographer Doug Emmet to venture into worlds of claymation, daytime television, commercial shlock, art installations, and performance art, all amidst a visual world that is as richly colored and detailed as it is messy and insane. ![]() Like the brilliant cacophony of puppets and prosthetics offered in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, Sorry t o Bother You uses an array of mixed media to convey a world that is indomitably strange, yet all-too-familiar. It's not just a jarring departure from the workplace Cash inhabits it's also a sly worldbuilding technique that gives the audience brief glances into the familiar-yet still unsettling foreign-time and place in which the events of this film exists. Boots Riley has Cash's desk quite literally bursting through the floors, crashing into the homes of the uninitiated folks to whom he is desperately trying to sell products they don't need to buy. Office Space, another classic comedy that lacks the sort of cinematic complexity of this film, used tired, static imagery to relate a tired, static lifestyle. While some directors, especially in comedy, may depict a boring corporate setting like the telemarketing office from Sorry to Bother You as a bland, purgatorial void, Riley construes the whole thing like a pile of cubicles sitting on a goddamned earthquake. A film like Sorry to Bother You may be light-years ahead in its progressive voice and narrative tone, but first-time director Boots Riley’s effort to create a distinctive visual style in a comedy movie is about as old fashioned-and healthy for the medium-as it gets. But his life quickly improves when he gets a foot hold in his job by employing his "white voice," which serves as a magical tool that allows him to sell anything to anyone-much to the displeasure of his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), and coworkers Salvador and Squeeze (Jermaine Fowler and Steven Yeun, respectively).īut far more than a comedy that attempts to skewer the absurdities of contemporary corporate America, Sorry to Bother You devolves into a bizarre sci-fi/fantasy hybrid, the messiness of which only elevates its artistic achievement. Lakeith Stanfield stars as Cassius "Cash" Green, a struggling Oakland native who finds uninspiring work at a dismal telemarketing firm. With his incendiary debut Sorry to Bother You, rapper-turned-director Boots Riley brings an incredible and idiosyncratic vision to the screen with a genre-bending satire that chips away at our current moment in time. ![]()
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