How Relay’s Analog Tech Gives The Classic Noir A Fresh Look

Relay is not the kind of film we see much of anymore, and it’s all the better for it. It’s a love letter to analog, heavily featuring record players, phone calls, and snail mail — but it’s not just paying lip service. It builds its central conceit on the shoulders of the ‘70s thrillers that thrive in paranoia, and uses a piece of bygone tech to enhance its narrative.

Relay follows a mysterious “fixer” (Riz Ahmed) who brokers deals between would-be corporate whistleblowers and the untouchable conglomerates they could potentially expose. Rather than helping them get the truth out, however, Ahmed’s Ash acts as a middleman for those who get cold feet. Through him, whistleblowers can cleanly buy their silence and return the intel to their former employers — all through analog infrastructure.

The film derives its name from the Telecommunications Relay Service, a publicly-funded program that relays messages from deaf callers. Ash uses a teletypewriter, or telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), to transmit anonymous, untraceable messages between his clients and their former employers. That makes him a ghost in the machine, accessing technology that director David Mackenzie likens to another world.

“I read the script and, like most people, I was going, ‘Is this really real?’” Mackenzie tells Inverse. “It’s such a kind of extraordinary reality. It is almost obsolete now because of easier technologies.”

Still, in some corners of New York — where Relay sets the scene — that technology still exists. “When we were scouting Penn Station, which is where Riz’s kind of lair is in the film... there were like four or five phone booths and then there was a [teletypewriter] booth,” Mackenzie continues. “To be able to see the kind of public version still in action, it was great.”

It may not be a tool many use today, but in Ash’s hands, it allowed Mackenzie, screenwriter Justin Piasecki, and their cast to ratchet up the paranoia inherent in a noir. Relay follows Ash on a case that shakes the foundations of his no-contact MO. His latest client is Sarah Grant (Lily James), a scientist in possession of a health report that could destroy the corner-cutting biotech company she once worked for. While she initially planned to expose their malpractice, she’s since become the target of her company’s shady enforcers. All she wants now is to give the documents back and return to her old life.

Sarah receives instructions from Ash through relay calls, which protect his identity — but even with that boundary up, this unlikely pair forge an even unlikelier connection.

“Lily’s character and mine barely meet in the whole movie, and yet the tension is driven by that relationship,” Riz Ahmed tells Inverse. The film follows the classic beats of a cat-and-mouse thriller, prompting us to wonder whether good will triumph in the end. “But also, what’s going to happen between these two? Will they ever meet? Will they connect in the way that they so clearly want to? I think there’s something really interesting about that slow burn chemistry,” Ahmed adds.

It’s certainly compelling to watch, even if conveying that chemistry behind the scenes was easier said than done.

“It was really an interesting dynamic, to be shooting night shoots in New York… on the phone to no one,” Lily James adds with a laugh. She performed most of these scenes alone, with another actor feeding her Ash’s lines off-camera. That system made for a tough shoot, but it made all the difference in conveying the loneliness Sarah shared with Ash.

“I love how many twists and surprises there are in this story,” continues James, “but I think at the core of it, [they’re] these lonely souls and these people that are longing to connect. I think that’s very relatable right now in our world… It was a unique partnership, and they bond against all odds.”

That tentative dynamic has been a staple of this genre for decades; it’s ironic that a piece of old tech is what updates it for a new generation.

Relay opens in theaters on Aug. 22.