Blindspotting (2018, R)

Another film that didn’t get any Oscar nods, though it’s another that a lot of people were rooting for before the nominations came out.  It’s also another film that I’d really wanted to see when I first heard about it, but it never came to my local cinema, and I hadn’t gotten to it on DVD until my recent “Oscar movies and beyond” push (I have a complicated relationship with my Netflix DVD queue.)  All that said, I am super glad that I finally saw it, because it’s awesome.

Collin has three days left on his probation.  In three days, he won’t have to follow a daily curfew, do the chores assigned to him at the halfway house where he’s been living, or stay within the county, all for fear of being sent back to prison.  All he has to do is stick to these rules for the next three days, and he’ll be home free – oh, and not get into any trouble, easier said than done with his best friend Miles around.  Like Collin, Miles is Oakland born and bred, but unlike Collin, Miles isn’t a convicted felon and is most definitely not trying to keep out of trouble.  As the two spend their days working for a moving service and their nights hanging out, all in an Oakland that’s increasingly gentrifying, Collin’s pleas for Miles to just take it easy for a few days fall on mostly deaf ears.

I feel like that’s a lot of explanation and it still doesn’t get at a lot of what this film is about and what makes it great.  In a way, it has a simple premise – young Black man in Oakland tries to make it through his last three days on probation without incident – and with the way it follows Collin and Miles through the events of each day – the boredom, the hustling, the arguments, the freestyle rapping, the inevitable trouble – it can give off the effect that it’s just taking a stroll through these three days of plot.  But really, there’s so much going on here.

Lots of really interesting themes, all brought out in both overt and subtle ways, often with different variations on each theme and a number of intersections between them.  The gentrification of Oakland, overrunning it with (white) hipsters – a particular sore spot for Miles, who’s white and doesn’t appreciate being mistaken for a “transplant” who doesn’t get what Oakland is really about.  The incredible strain of being on probation, the constant threat of Collin being thrown back in jail if he puts one toe over any number of largely-arbitrary lines.  The question of what someone sees when they look at you, the way Collin, “the big Black guy with dreds,” is the one people tend to notice even when Miles is the one causing the problems.  The question, even if someone really changes, will people ever stop picturing them at their worst?  Police violence, community violence, anger and dehumanization and fear, performances of masculinity and being a “tough guy.”  And honestly, that just scratches the surface.

It’s a film that I’ve been thinking about basically since I saw it, and I keep coming up with more connections, the way one scene calls back to another or the way this throwaway joke ties into a larger theme about something crucial.  In a way, its structure feels a little like a play, with themes and symbols emerging in the dialogue and returning in critical ways without being clearly signposted.  It’s really fascinating and thought-provoking, while at the same time being funny and entertaining.  It’s an incisive social commentary, and it’s also a very personal story about these two lifelong friends.  I’m not even sure how I can go about praising this movie highly enough.  I’ve said a lot of words so far, but I don’t think any of it fully gets at what this movie accomplishes.

If you’ve heard of this movie, you probably know that it stars and was co-written by Daveed Diggs, a.k.a. Lafayette/Jefferson from Hamilton.  I’m super impressed by Diggs here, both as a writer and as an actor.  If I hadn’t known this was his first screenplay, I wouldn’t have guessed it.  And his acting is really wonderful; it’s subtle, but it gets across a lot with very little.  His co-writer/co-star is Rafael Casal playing Miles, who is everything the character needs to be, even if you sometimes (often?) want to smack him for his self-centered impulsiveness.  The film also features Jasmine Cephas Jones (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds from Hamilton,) Wayne Knight (Newman!), and Utkarsh Ambudkar (a freestyle buddy of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s, and he played Mindy’s brother Rishi on The Mindy Project.)

Warnings

Lots of language (including the N-word,) violence, sexual references, drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements.