Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7242142/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindspotting)

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[Henry Gale]

Been thinking about this a lot since I saw it a week ago, especially after also seeing the similarly Oakland-set and especially fantastic Sorry To Bother You (Perhaps a great double feature? Or even a triple one with Black Panther and its ties to the city?) so close to it. It's really stayed with me, and overall I think it's a really strong, bold, raw, impassioned and starkly crafted piece of work.

I almost recommend knowing nothing about it going in. The trailer is really well crafted, but it frames the central conflict to be more central and tonally dramatic than the film entirely operates in, and perhaps shows a little more than I personally would've. It's a very tonally and stylistically diverse movie that's most importantly very, very funny and alive throughout. The humour is a beautiful aspect of it, both in and of itself, but also because it manages to disarm you as a viewer and humanize its more intense and dramatic elements.

The fact that Diggs and Casal wrote this over the course of a decade for themselves to play really shows through in their effortless chemistry, and also means that their characters feel perfectly tailored to them, the abundance of themes and musings in their script never feel unnecessary or like they've been overstuffed to have survived endless drafts, and despite feeling very up-to-the-minute and having a direct line to the so many vivid emotions of the zeitgeist, its most potent ideas are the ones that feel the most timeless and like they'll last and remain effective well beyond the now of which it was finally made and released.

Really recommend it.

[Pop Trash]

So close to being a very good film...but the ending is some Paul Haggis' Crash level wackness.

Also, only people who know the Lake Merritt hood in Oakland will know this, but the fight at the "dive" bar involving the flaming drink is actually a really nice area with super expensive rent around there. You can see the Walden Pond Bookstore in the background where I frequent all the time (I live a bit further down the lake in a less desirable area). Very few fights break out in that hood, aside from some upper middle class white people passive aggressively "arguing" over a parking spot.

[Pop Trash]

The code switching race aspects are interesting here. The white guy acts out in more stereotypically "black thug" ways than his black friend, but seems to avoid the law by simply being a white dude in eyes of the cops. It's also apparently not really an act since he grew up around black people in black neighborhoods (ie. East Oakland) since he was a kid, but later gets called out for his "black" affectations by another white collar, educated black man (who is acting more "white") at a party. This offends the white guy and leads to him popping off both with his fists and a gun, since in his mind, he's acting in the same naturalistic way he always acted since he was a kid, and being a working class guy growing up in black neighborhoods, has the right to act that way. Acting "white" for him would be more of an affectation. Interesting stuff. Pity about the movie's ending, though.

[Henry Gale]

The code switching race aspects are interesting here. The white guy acts out in more stereotypically "black thug" ways than his black friend, but seems to avoid the law by simply being a white dude in eyes of the cops. It's also apparently not really an act since he grew up around black people in black neighborhoods (ie. East Oakland) since he was a kid, but later gets called out for his "black" affectations by another white collar, educated black man (who is acting more "white") at a party. This offends the white guy and leads to him popping off both with his fists and a gun, since in his mind, he's acting in the same naturalistic way he always acted since he was a kid, and being a working class guy growing up in black neighborhoods, has the right to act that way, and acting "white" for him would be more of an affectation. Interesting stuff. Pity about the movie's ending, though.

Yeah, that whole sequence is so layered, intense and generally well-done. The most subtly potent moment that lingered for me was when Collin hears the other black guy's description of Miles, simply with the characteristics of a "total culture vulture" saying "bruh" which is enough for Collin to instantly rejecting it as embarrassing, obviously assuming the image of someone more like the host who greeted them on the way in and not his lifelong friend. Obviously the film is named after an idea that stems from the idea of face-value perceptions being upended and tested, but that interaction and reversal distills it right there in such an unexpected way.

I also think the ending stretch worked a lot more for me than it did for you. It's pretty audacious in its performative elements, and you could obviously endlessly argue the stretched logic in the logistics and probability of it all (which over time I actually began to realize is probably the whole stem of them making the two of them part of a moving company in the first place, and it wouldn't have been the husband who likely would've arranged it to think, "Hmm, why does that company's name sound familiar..?") but by the end of it, I knew that it was extremely effective for me. Even if it sounds insane and ridiculous on paper, I think they made it work against all odds in practice, hinging it on so much authentic emotion and well-planted pathos.

[Pop Trash]

I also think the ending stretch worked a lot more for me than it did for you. It's pretty audacious in its performative elements, and you could obviously endlessly argue the stretched logic in the logistics and probability of it all (which over time I actually began to realize is probably the whole stem of them making the two of them part of a moving company in the first place, and it wouldn't have been the husband who likely would've arranged it to think, "Hmm, why does that company's name sound familiar..?") but by the end of it, I knew that it was extremely effective for me. Even if it sounds insane and ridiculous on paper, I think they made it work against all odds in practice, hinging it on so much authentic emotion and well-planted pathos.

I didn't buy it at all and felt like yelling at the screen when I realized what was happening. There's over two million people in the East Bay area (and the implication is that the cop lives in Walnut Creek, which is a mostly white suburb outside of Alameda County) and numerous moving companies, so the likelihood of that happening is like finding a needle in a haystack. It feels so goddamn "written" like they fell for the Robert McKee school of "raise the stakes" simply to have a big dramatic 3rd act moment despite the implausibility and contrivance of it all. Very Paul Haggis' Crash which is not a good thing in my book. It sucks because everything before that scene is really good, and an excellent representation of my adopted town. Sorry to Bother You is a better movie, but the Oakland in that exists in an alternate reality. This feels much more grounded in realism, which is why the ending is so frustrating.

[Grouchy]

Whenever I watch these movies about specific cities in the US I always wonder how would my perception of them be tainted in the same way it is everytime I watch a representation of Buenos Aires or its people on screen, but ultimately, I won't ever have the insider knowledge necessary to make that judgment so what would be the point?

I thought this was excellent stuff, very well directed and scripted, and I dug the old school dream sequences the most. It really makes sense when you find out the two actors wrote the script over several years - their performances ring true at all times, like they've really lived it from the inside. And the tone of the film is such that, while the themes are discussed out loud, it never becomes ponderous or a drag to sit through. I didn't even mind the implausibility of the ending, and I wouldn't object to the cop calling precisely that moving company. That's one detail that could clearly be overlooked and it's not like he ever expected to see the driver again. I just thought the scene was very intense, and I don't even enjoy rap.

Between this and Sorry to Bother You, Spike Lee's sons are finally starting to come out of the bushes this year.