What is going on in Oakland? Whatever is happening it’s producing real quality films. Ryan Coogler is now 3 for 3 with one of the great beginnings of any directorial career. Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You was a strong feature debut getting Get Out like buzz. And now we have Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs’s Blindspotting, which is another promising debut writing effort about racial politics east of the bay. Blindspotting doesn’t always effectively land its points, but it hits some truly impressive moments that give Diggs and Casal a platform to show off just how talented they are.
Collin (Diggs) has been on probation for almost a year after a 2 month prison sentence. He’s been playing it straight, working at a moving company with his best friend Miles (Casal) and living in a halfway house. With 3 days left before his probation lifts, Collin witnesses Officer Molina (Ethan Embry) murder an unarmed black man on his way home for curfew. This wake up call puts Collin on more edge than he already was. Apparently trying to get back together with his ex Val (Janina Gavankar), finding a place to live after probation ends, worrying about Miles’s son, and trying to keep Miles from ruining his own life was too easy…
Capturing gentrification in a movie isn’t exactly cinematic, but that’s exactly what Blindspotting attempts to do. First time director Carlos Estrada employs lots of slow walking tracking shots establishing this Oakland neighborhood in flux. In the foreground are Miles and Collin chatting, but around them are interracial relationships, vegan burger joints, tattoo parlors, and multiple ethnic storefronts on the same city street. The gentrification then manifests itself in Blindspotting via personal internal and external conflicts in Collin and Miles. Collin, eager to put his past behind him, seeks to move forward in time, and in turn is more accepting of the new normal of his neighborhood. Miles, on the other hand, has to embrace his personal cultural appropriation, which scares him and makes him lash out more at any weird change in the neighborhood he disapproves of. The moving company is a stroke of genius: most of the homes Collin and Miles are unloading are fixer uppers being bought by gentrifiers, essentially ejecting the old neighborhood with their arrival. When the movie gets subtle like that and stops using the words “gentrify” or “change,” Blindspottings points hit home quite well. Because of all the time spent on the changing neighborhood, the link between the shooting and Collin’s evolution gets a bit lost in the shuffle, and only gets paid off by some screenwriting magic unfortunately. Nevertheless, Blindspotting really captures the effect of changing demographics on current residents in a neighborhood better than most films in recent memory.
The success of Blindspotting rides on the writers and stars, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Diggs and Casal are friends in real life, and their chemistry is 100% evident. As serious as I’ve made the subject matter seem above, the movie is 75% a comedy. Diggs and Casal spend most of the film just shooting the sh*t with each other, either fake rapping or needling each other they way long time friends would. Their side hustles when cleaning out houses generate some of the movie’s biggest belly laughs, of which there are plenty. When the serious stuff unfolds, regardless of how artfully the material gets brought up, both Diggs and Casal sell the sh*t out of the material, fully committing to whatever the scene demands that they do. The best scene of the movie is just the two of them in an empty parking lot, Diggs’s well adjusted character confronting Casal’s loose cannon. Casal is also excellent in scenes with Jasmin Cephas Jones (his movie wife) and his movie son Ziggy Baitinger. As good as Casal is though, Diggs is simply dynamite in Blindspotting. Yes the dude can spit raps (he was on Hamilton), but he also shows depth of emotion when with Miles’s son or Val, and as the movie goes on, we see Diggs dig deep into Collin to find the growing rage and frustration inside of him at his current predicament. This is a star making performance from him. I’ve liked Diggs for a while: everytime he shows up in something he stands out, and I’m glad he’s gotten a chance to show off here.
Blindspotting is a reference to a painting where there are two images, and a person will inherently see one image over the other. So either you can change how your mind thinks, or accept that you have blind spots. Blindspotting is everywhere in the film of the same name, with Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal showcasing the human examples of this concept. As a person who lives in a gentrifying neighborhood, Blindspotting has given me lots to think about, and encouraged me to go see Hamilton, and Oakland.