‘Blindspotting’
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
Starring Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar
Rated R
This has been the summer of Oakland at the movies, with the California city providing the setting for Boots Riley’s transformative “Sorry to Bother You” and now “Blindspotting,” starring and co-written by “Hamilton” Tony winner Daveed Diggs.
And it’s no wonder, really. The East Bay metropolis is one of America’s most emblematic cities, so often forgotten in the shadow of San Francisco’s glamour but blessed with a rich history and culture all its own and a large and diverse population, while facing an advancing tide of gentrification that is among the most pronounced in the United States, right at the center of the tech boom.
This is rich fodder for a movie like “Blindspotting,” in which Oakland natives Diggs and his friend Rafael Casal craft a screenplay that parallels the stories of their characters, a felon named Collin (Diggs) at the tail end of two years of probation and his best friend Miles (Casal), with that of their hometown.
It’s an effective concept and an affecting one, resulting in a movie that offers a vibrant maelstrom of contrasting tones, including moments of broad comedy and darkly serious drama, abrupt character shifts and stylistic risks such as freestyle rapping during intense moments.
This is all conjoined by a deep sense of conviction in the significance of it all, and the importance of fighting to retain a hold on a place where such a fascinating, contradictory experience might be possible. There’s a general sense of tumult and unease that permeates throughout the movie, directed by Carlos López Estrada, which mixes with a sort of scrappy, underdog pride.
That makes “Blindspotting” very much an Oakland movie, in other words, and in some respects it is as much of a work of sociology and urban studies as it is a narrative drama.
The film begins with a split-screen montage of street scenes that capture the two worlds that the film will show intersecting throughout the city: on one side, there are everyday moments of the newer arrivals that are progressively changing the landscape, while the other offers images of the long-standing Oaklanders who have made the city what it is for so long.
The story of Collin and Miles will take them across Oakland — they work for a moving company — while they are confronted with a series of struggles and fears that are all too recognizable in modern-day urban America, none more dramatic than Collin being the only witness to a police officer fatally shooting a black man multiple times in the back and facing overwhelming guilt over not doing anything to prevent it.
There are plenty of lighter aspects, too, in which the filmmakers poke fun at some of the cliches emerging in a city that The New York Times once dubbed “Brooklyn by the Bay,” including the anguish Miles feels over the transformation of a favored cheap food spot into an hot spot for vegans. The movie contains multitudes, just like its setting, and it consistently hones in on the notion that we all have endemic blind spots that prevent us from seeing the whole truth of a person, or a place.
To make a movie like this is an extraordinarily ambitious endeavor, easily susceptible to folly. It is purposefully all over the place, an emotional outpouring that can be tiring at times.
But that it feels as authentic and well-honed as it does is a testament to its creative talent’s innate familiarity and love for this city, and deeper understanding of the degree to which the Oakland experience is the American one.
