To be honest, I was initially terrified when I saw the promotional spots for Blindspotting.
First off, it's a Lionsgate film, which, right off the bat, should make you at least mildly weary going into their projects. I can only describe Lionsgate as Miramax, if they had a branch of their film productions run by a bunch of beer-chugging, imbecilic, thick-headed frat boys. I mean, with every Precious, we also get a Disaster Movie or another god-for-fucking-saken Madea piece of dreck. And from my first impressions of the trailer, it seemed like some shallow, melodramatic, ungainly effort to get a piece of the socially-conscious pie by utilizing the police brutality element merely as some sort of shocking viscera, intending as some sort of an afterthought to carry an entire film.
And then I saw all the reviews comparing it to Do the Right Thing...and I got even more terrified. I mean, this film? What could there possibly be to it that Spike Lee could possibly be trembling in his boots, bringing in around-the-clock security to make it certain that his crown remains untouched. Well, while Spike Lee unequivocally had a cinematic visage and hyper-energy that made his film more intriguing, what writers Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, as well as director Carlos Lopez Estrada, bring to Blindspotting is an anxious, raw, unflinching spirit that brings out searing emotions.
Is it better than Do the Right Thing? Unfair to compare the two at this moment in time, in my opinion. Did it effect me more than Do the Right Thing? Holy shit, did it ever.
The film revolves around Collin, played by Daveed Diggs. He is a convicted felon due to a horrific bar fight, which ended in a guy getting severely burned. After serving two months, he is released on a one-year probation, which requires him to live in a halfway house, obey an 11:00 p.m. curfew, obtain and sustain employment, and avoid any sort of criminal activity. However, there's one mild obstacle that may threaten his freedom: his best friend, Miles, played by Rafael Casal.
He is a full-on "wigger," complete with grills and a revolver he recently bought from a third-rate Uber driver. His hot temper and hasty attitude threaten to, at times, get Collin in precarious situations, despite them having veritable, mutual love for each other. Additionally, while driving home after a shift at a moving company, he witnesses a cop, played by Ethan Embry, killing an unarmed black man. This event leaves him traumatized and angered, leading to an internal conflict of trying to follow the straight path and wanting to get justice for his people.
Diggs and Casal themselves stated that they wanted to create a love letter to their hometown, Oakland, the location of the film, stating that they believed that Oakland had been unfairly misrepresented in film. In a rare moment in cinema history, it actually feels fitting that a music video director, the aforementioned Carlos Estrada, was given the task of representing Oakland completely, for better or worse. For the record, it was most likely going to be Estrada that was chosen, seeing how he had directed music videos for clipping, Daveed Diggs' hip-hop group, but either way, his gritty mise-en-scene does reflect hip-hop music videos, but in this film, it gives Oakland its own soul that it can properly relay to the audience, some of whom may or may not have grown up there (* cough cough*).
He has a real daring vision with his visuals, including a nightmare involving Miles as a rapping prosecutor and a delusion in which Collin is confronted with a cemetery, each gravestone shadowed by a black man standing in front of it. The camerawork by Robby Baumgartner also adds to the harsh ambiance, with the lightness being only as bright as the tough, rugged nature of Oakland allows and the darkness swathing in itself, adding an additional level of uncertainty and menace, as well as the tight close-ups that appear more frequently in the final third and pierce gruesomely into these characters' intense, edgy cores. In addition, the soundtrack of this film is 100% Oakland certified, embracing the nostalgia feel of the 90's Bay Area sound with such sheer allegiance and observance that it was jarring and mildly unwelcoming when a modern-sounding song appeared on the closing credits. I'm yours forever, Fantastic Negrito.
This film clearly wants to say something. What it says, I'll get to later, but what's remarkable about Diggs and Casal's writing is that instead of composing caricatures or personifications of salient points that will undoubtedly be used by the overzealous, oblivious social justice warrior, they instead opt for creating characters and personalities. Collin just might be one of my favorite protagonists in all of cinema. He physically personifies a gangster, a smooth-talking criminal, yet his actually character is an unmitigated subversion of that. He constantly is looking to evade trouble, but yet his primary battle seems not to conform to his probation conditions or to keep himself clear of any shenanigans, but instead to abscond all his inner-paranoias and stay level-headed through his trying times. He's an unlikely yet more-than-applicable straight man.
Miles, on the other hand, is as loose of a cannon as you could expect to come across. The brilliance, however, is that he isn't written as flippantly trying to act black or some surface-level scoundrel. He just has an unbridled energy and has accustomed himself to his surroundings. He's immature and bold, which leads to some big laughs, particularly in a black beauty parlor scene where Miles attempts to peddle hair products, yet he does value his family, particularly his black wife, Ashley, and his son. He's never portrayed as trying to overcompensate or a perpetrator of cultural appropriation. He's portrayed as someone who pushes his limits far often than not, thus making his character not a villain, but an imperfect human, particularly in a scene where he almost puts his son in danger.
It's actually quite surprising how the community seems to have no qualms about Miles' demeanor and racial posturing for the majority of the film. I mean, given the successes of Post Malone and Iggy Azalea, it's been shown that sometimes it takes the black masses a little longer to catch on when someone's blatant, presumptuously donning their sacred culture as a costume. However, the dynamic between Collin and Miles does play into a consistent theme during the film: bias. Again, the themes in this film are actually sparsely told, but I noticed an indication of commentary on implicit bias once during each of the acts.
In the first third, it happens during a scene, more specifically in an offhand remark, when Collin is accused of behaving rudely at his job when, in all actuality, it was Miles, but of course, Collin is black and looks the part. In the second third, Collin's ex-girlfriend, Val, discusses with him about how easy Miles got off during the night of the barfight, seeing how Miles participated in the fight, along with Collin. In the final third, everything comes to a head as Miles is finally called out on acting overly ghetto, which not only leads to a fight, but also result in an argument between Collin and Miles, in which both characters receive ugly epiphanies about their own situations.
Miles is forced to confront the truth that no matter how much black validation he has accrued, the sole reason that he has been able to act how he has acted was because of his lighter pigment. Collin is plunged even further into his pursuit for justice, which climaxes during the film's most harrowing, gut-wrenching emotional crescendo; a consummate hip-hop fueled moment of social potency, a desperately rattled stream-of-consciousness presentation, a tortured point-of-interest, and such agonizing, relatable verities that my eyes welled up with tears. It is seriously one of the greatest movie scenes in all of cinema. It assaults you with the verisimilitude of the scenario, but enraptures you with the meaning. To me, it's where the film truly ends, with those last five minutes being only a breather for the film before the end credits.
It helps that Daveed Diggs has flexed his acting muscles to a much greater extent than Hamilton could even hope to have claimed. Diggs has an off-kilter everyman vibe, to where he is collected as a person, yet lets his shattered, skittering vulnerability rush right out of him, both emotionally separating himself in the context of Oakland and emotionally revealing himself as a lost human. The way he struggles with freestyles during the majority of the movie, yet lets it all pour out when it matters is just an unforgettable, brutally poignant acting job.
However, all the other actors shine as well. Ethan Embry as Officer Molina is minimally powerful, giving off that pathetic, woeful, puppy-dog look that conjures up images of Darren Wilson. It instinctively sets me off, but is technically remarkable due to his power. Janina Gavankar portrays Val, Collin's ex-girlfriend, with a complex, morbid allure, while another Hamilton alumni, Jasmine Cephas Jones, portrays Miles' wife, Ashley, as a plucky, soulful, down-to-earth woman, who possess a loving, sweet soul underneath those ghetto braids. Rafael Casal, also straight from Hamilton (jeez, I haven't seen the word, Hamilton, this much since the Tony Awards), employs a twisted gusto and unrelenting bravura as Miles. His presentation is almost Broadway-esque, but here, he's in a whole different realm; a realm that gives him some stellar comedic moments and some penetrating dramatic moments.
The titular "blindspotting" stems from a conversation between Collin and Val near the end of the movie. In order to familiarize herself with the concept of Rubin vase, that classic optical illusion where you either see a vase or two faces, she calls it "blindspotting," because it's what happens when something is present and you don't notice it, but you do eventually. I knew that I could apply this concept to Miles (his blindspotting moment being his grappling with his white privilege). I struggled in applying this concept to Collin, as his mere probation conditions could be his, seeing how he so desperately tries to manage his life that he can barely remember to be home at 11.
Then, I realized, it didn't matter, because this movie was blindspotting me in more ways than one. Throughout my initial reactions to the trailer, all of these narrative elements were present, but not in the trailer. They were in my blind spot and I had to actually look to discover it. Also, in these liberal-charged days of filmmaking, this film put the social commentary in its blind spot, forcing us not to sift through a treasure trove of racial complexities, but to submit to an emotional experience; not to think, but to feel.
First off, it's a Lionsgate film, which, right off the bat, should make you at least mildly weary going into their projects. I can only describe Lionsgate as Miramax, if they had a branch of their film productions run by a bunch of beer-chugging, imbecilic, thick-headed frat boys. I mean, with every Precious, we also get a Disaster Movie or another god-for-fucking-saken Madea piece of dreck. And from my first impressions of the trailer, it seemed like some shallow, melodramatic, ungainly effort to get a piece of the socially-conscious pie by utilizing the police brutality element merely as some sort of shocking viscera, intending as some sort of an afterthought to carry an entire film.
And then I saw all the reviews comparing it to Do the Right Thing...and I got even more terrified. I mean, this film? What could there possibly be to it that Spike Lee could possibly be trembling in his boots, bringing in around-the-clock security to make it certain that his crown remains untouched. Well, while Spike Lee unequivocally had a cinematic visage and hyper-energy that made his film more intriguing, what writers Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, as well as director Carlos Lopez Estrada, bring to Blindspotting is an anxious, raw, unflinching spirit that brings out searing emotions.
Is it better than Do the Right Thing? Unfair to compare the two at this moment in time, in my opinion. Did it effect me more than Do the Right Thing? Holy shit, did it ever.
The film revolves around Collin, played by Daveed Diggs. He is a convicted felon due to a horrific bar fight, which ended in a guy getting severely burned. After serving two months, he is released on a one-year probation, which requires him to live in a halfway house, obey an 11:00 p.m. curfew, obtain and sustain employment, and avoid any sort of criminal activity. However, there's one mild obstacle that may threaten his freedom: his best friend, Miles, played by Rafael Casal.
He is a full-on "wigger," complete with grills and a revolver he recently bought from a third-rate Uber driver. His hot temper and hasty attitude threaten to, at times, get Collin in precarious situations, despite them having veritable, mutual love for each other. Additionally, while driving home after a shift at a moving company, he witnesses a cop, played by Ethan Embry, killing an unarmed black man. This event leaves him traumatized and angered, leading to an internal conflict of trying to follow the straight path and wanting to get justice for his people.
Diggs and Casal themselves stated that they wanted to create a love letter to their hometown, Oakland, the location of the film, stating that they believed that Oakland had been unfairly misrepresented in film. In a rare moment in cinema history, it actually feels fitting that a music video director, the aforementioned Carlos Estrada, was given the task of representing Oakland completely, for better or worse. For the record, it was most likely going to be Estrada that was chosen, seeing how he had directed music videos for clipping, Daveed Diggs' hip-hop group, but either way, his gritty mise-en-scene does reflect hip-hop music videos, but in this film, it gives Oakland its own soul that it can properly relay to the audience, some of whom may or may not have grown up there (* cough cough*).
He has a real daring vision with his visuals, including a nightmare involving Miles as a rapping prosecutor and a delusion in which Collin is confronted with a cemetery, each gravestone shadowed by a black man standing in front of it. The camerawork by Robby Baumgartner also adds to the harsh ambiance, with the lightness being only as bright as the tough, rugged nature of Oakland allows and the darkness swathing in itself, adding an additional level of uncertainty and menace, as well as the tight close-ups that appear more frequently in the final third and pierce gruesomely into these characters' intense, edgy cores. In addition, the soundtrack of this film is 100% Oakland certified, embracing the nostalgia feel of the 90's Bay Area sound with such sheer allegiance and observance that it was jarring and mildly unwelcoming when a modern-sounding song appeared on the closing credits. I'm yours forever, Fantastic Negrito.
This film clearly wants to say something. What it says, I'll get to later, but what's remarkable about Diggs and Casal's writing is that instead of composing caricatures or personifications of salient points that will undoubtedly be used by the overzealous, oblivious social justice warrior, they instead opt for creating characters and personalities. Collin just might be one of my favorite protagonists in all of cinema. He physically personifies a gangster, a smooth-talking criminal, yet his actually character is an unmitigated subversion of that. He constantly is looking to evade trouble, but yet his primary battle seems not to conform to his probation conditions or to keep himself clear of any shenanigans, but instead to abscond all his inner-paranoias and stay level-headed through his trying times. He's an unlikely yet more-than-applicable straight man.
Miles, on the other hand, is as loose of a cannon as you could expect to come across. The brilliance, however, is that he isn't written as flippantly trying to act black or some surface-level scoundrel. He just has an unbridled energy and has accustomed himself to his surroundings. He's immature and bold, which leads to some big laughs, particularly in a black beauty parlor scene where Miles attempts to peddle hair products, yet he does value his family, particularly his black wife, Ashley, and his son. He's never portrayed as trying to overcompensate or a perpetrator of cultural appropriation. He's portrayed as someone who pushes his limits far often than not, thus making his character not a villain, but an imperfect human, particularly in a scene where he almost puts his son in danger.
It's actually quite surprising how the community seems to have no qualms about Miles' demeanor and racial posturing for the majority of the film. I mean, given the successes of Post Malone and Iggy Azalea, it's been shown that sometimes it takes the black masses a little longer to catch on when someone's blatant, presumptuously donning their sacred culture as a costume. However, the dynamic between Collin and Miles does play into a consistent theme during the film: bias. Again, the themes in this film are actually sparsely told, but I noticed an indication of commentary on implicit bias once during each of the acts.
In the first third, it happens during a scene, more specifically in an offhand remark, when Collin is accused of behaving rudely at his job when, in all actuality, it was Miles, but of course, Collin is black and looks the part. In the second third, Collin's ex-girlfriend, Val, discusses with him about how easy Miles got off during the night of the barfight, seeing how Miles participated in the fight, along with Collin. In the final third, everything comes to a head as Miles is finally called out on acting overly ghetto, which not only leads to a fight, but also result in an argument between Collin and Miles, in which both characters receive ugly epiphanies about their own situations.
Miles is forced to confront the truth that no matter how much black validation he has accrued, the sole reason that he has been able to act how he has acted was because of his lighter pigment. Collin is plunged even further into his pursuit for justice, which climaxes during the film's most harrowing, gut-wrenching emotional crescendo; a consummate hip-hop fueled moment of social potency, a desperately rattled stream-of-consciousness presentation, a tortured point-of-interest, and such agonizing, relatable verities that my eyes welled up with tears. It is seriously one of the greatest movie scenes in all of cinema. It assaults you with the verisimilitude of the scenario, but enraptures you with the meaning. To me, it's where the film truly ends, with those last five minutes being only a breather for the film before the end credits.
It helps that Daveed Diggs has flexed his acting muscles to a much greater extent than Hamilton could even hope to have claimed. Diggs has an off-kilter everyman vibe, to where he is collected as a person, yet lets his shattered, skittering vulnerability rush right out of him, both emotionally separating himself in the context of Oakland and emotionally revealing himself as a lost human. The way he struggles with freestyles during the majority of the movie, yet lets it all pour out when it matters is just an unforgettable, brutally poignant acting job.
However, all the other actors shine as well. Ethan Embry as Officer Molina is minimally powerful, giving off that pathetic, woeful, puppy-dog look that conjures up images of Darren Wilson. It instinctively sets me off, but is technically remarkable due to his power. Janina Gavankar portrays Val, Collin's ex-girlfriend, with a complex, morbid allure, while another Hamilton alumni, Jasmine Cephas Jones, portrays Miles' wife, Ashley, as a plucky, soulful, down-to-earth woman, who possess a loving, sweet soul underneath those ghetto braids. Rafael Casal, also straight from Hamilton (jeez, I haven't seen the word, Hamilton, this much since the Tony Awards), employs a twisted gusto and unrelenting bravura as Miles. His presentation is almost Broadway-esque, but here, he's in a whole different realm; a realm that gives him some stellar comedic moments and some penetrating dramatic moments.
The titular "blindspotting" stems from a conversation between Collin and Val near the end of the movie. In order to familiarize herself with the concept of Rubin vase, that classic optical illusion where you either see a vase or two faces, she calls it "blindspotting," because it's what happens when something is present and you don't notice it, but you do eventually. I knew that I could apply this concept to Miles (his blindspotting moment being his grappling with his white privilege). I struggled in applying this concept to Collin, as his mere probation conditions could be his, seeing how he so desperately tries to manage his life that he can barely remember to be home at 11.
Then, I realized, it didn't matter, because this movie was blindspotting me in more ways than one. Throughout my initial reactions to the trailer, all of these narrative elements were present, but not in the trailer. They were in my blind spot and I had to actually look to discover it. Also, in these liberal-charged days of filmmaking, this film put the social commentary in its blind spot, forcing us not to sift through a treasure trove of racial complexities, but to submit to an emotional experience; not to think, but to feel.
And boy, did I! And when I did, I thought long and hard about it after it was over. Don't let the film simmer in your blind spot. See it as soon as you can!
RATING: Three-and-three-quarters stars out of four
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