Movie Review ~ Sorry/Not Sorry

The #MeToo movement was Hollywood’s reckoning, and it has reshaped the industry and beyond as stories of long-standing abuse (physical, emotional, verbal, etc.) continue to emerge.  Cancel culture has created uncomfortable conversations.  Necessary dialogues, yes, but awkward discussions that explore accountability, scope, and what it means to apologize for your actions and begin a healing process.  It’s not an overnight fix, and it will never be a quick puzzle to solve.  The falls from grace have been legendary, with names many of us grew up with or were coming to know going on an invisible list with red lines drawn through them.

What happens after the apology, though?  When is the atoning over?  Who decides when the abuser, who has made their living in an industry that turned their back on them, gets to gain their power position again?  What constitutes a “good” apology?  All fair questions but inquiries that pertain to the perpetrator of the problem, not the victim who is dealing with the pervasive and often hidden scars left by abuse.  These are murky waters to dive into, and directors Cara Mones and Caroline Suh have jumped into the chilly waves looking to explore the aftermath of one comedian’s fall from grace.

As a cinematic extension of Melena Ryzik, Cara Buckley, and Jodi Kantor’s 2017 New York Times exposé, “Louis C.K. Is Accused by 5 Women of Sexual Misconduct”, Sorry/Not Sorry doesn’t pull punches. The film zeroes in on three women – Jen Kirkman, Megan Koester, and Abby Schachner – who found themselves unwitting players in Louis C.K.’s years of misconduct.  The women share unsettling experiences as they bravely tell their stories of what it was like to be targeted by the once-disgraced comedian.

Once disgraced is the correct term for Louis C.K. because, as of today, he’s returned to the industry almost more popular than ever.  Despite all the accusations and his horrible behavior, none of what he did was an outright crime, so there was little anyone could do from a legal standpoint.  Their ordeals, presented with raw, intimate authenticity, do not shy away from the complexity of their pain, nor does it sugarcoat the scrutiny and skepticism they have faced.  Insidious victim-blaming (from high-ranking friends of Louis C.K. like Dave Chappelle and Roseanne, who you’d think would be more empathetic based on their life experience) has fought to make these women into the problem, invalidating their truths in the process. 

Produced by The New York Times, some might argue Mones and Suh have made a lopsided documentary that only half converses with its subject (Louis C.K. declined to participate), but it’s precisely this laser focus on solely the victims, which gives Sorry/Not Sorry its power.  Now, viewers are all but forced to confront uncomfortable truths about power dynamics and our tendency as a culture in love with celebrity to protect the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable.  There’s a human cost to celebrity misbehavior, and we’ve all been complicit in some way.  The documentary encourages us to buck the system and prioritize accountability first and redemption second.

Divided into seven parts, Mones and Suh have crafted Sorry/Not Sorry to be as much about advocacy as it is about documenting how we have arrived at this point.  It’s deliberately paced to allow viewers to absorb the material, enhanced by the editing and straightforward cinematography.  It is perhaps less cinematic on a larger scale and might have been more appropriate for a streaming service to pick it up, but at 90 minutes, it would have been hard to stretch this out any longer into a multi-part series.  To do that, the filmmakers would have had to go deeper and find more people to interview who still supported the comedian and could illustrate their stance. 

It’s aggravating that a movie like Sorry/Not Sorry is even being made in 2024; you’d think that the attitudes would have changed years into movements to counteract this behavior (far earlier than #MeToo).  The very public shaming of a titan in the industry is what got the ball rolling, and the sad thing was that so many people knew about Harvey Weinstein, you wonder how many survivors could have been spared had the problem been dealt with earlier.  Sorry/Not Sorry may not revolutionize the genre, but its a crucial entry in the ongoing dialogue about power, justice, and the human cost of celebrity misconduct.