Blindspotting

This is a contemporary classic opera. As our canonic operas were in their day, this uses an epic story of heightened emotions, poetic expression and musical energy to reflect upon contemporary issues. 

Oakland serves as a microcosm of America’s roiling racism, with trigger-happy white cops, a divided nation and blacks walking a quaking line to preserve their sanity, dignity and safety. It catches the current trickle-down racism.

This is the America that the blacklisted NFL QB Colin Kaepernick kneels at the anthem to protest, at which Republicans cower behind the pretence to patriotism. 

The film tips its hand when Verdi’s drinking song from La Traviata plays behind the opening credits: “let's not waste our time with things that don't give us pleasure. Let's enjoy life, for the delight of love is fleeting and all too brief….”

  Like most of our opera experiences today, for much of the time we don’t know what the characters are saying. That’s okay. The plot, emotions and psychology come through. For the most part this obscurity is due to the strangeness of the street language. 

But one scene is written to let us off the hook: Miles negotiates the sale of a rowboat to a free-wheeling African American stranger. Both speak languages completely foreign to us but — it turns out — also to each other! Unlike the larger communities they represent, they can strike an agreement and understanding with no idea of what the other is saying. The willingness overrides their differences.

  Unlike the Republican nightmare, here the good guy Collin is the African American, trying to get through the last three days of his probation without a lapse that would toss him back into jail. 

  His best friend Miles, the white guy, has the virtue of lifelong loyalty, total freedom from racism but a violent streak, short fuse and inability to foresee and prevent disaster. The film’s question is whether Miles will prove Collin’s undoing or Collin will effect Miles’ redoing. 

The heroes’ respective street argot plays like music, especially when they unleash their wit and musical energy to ex temporize rap. The language is as free-wheeling, energetic and apparently unrestrained as the shooting and editing are. This is one zippy flick. 

Indeed, in Collin’s climactic confrontation with the pathetic white cop Collin’s emotional tirade is a rap song. His art amplifies his emotions, expresses his terribly conflicted ideas — and by finding artistic form provides an alternative outlet to what his pointed gun threatened. This aria gives Collin and his story the soaring of our purest spirit. He makes his point with a poem not the gun.  

The title points to a central theme, our choice between two perspectives within the same frame. 

  Collin’s ex Val is living the same test she demonstrated in her psychology review. There the viewer sees either the two faces on the side or the vase between them. Read the foreground or read the background? Collin calls it “face-vasing.” (Jasper Johns did a famous silkscreen version with two Picassos and a cup.)

Val used to see his best side. Now she first sees the ugliness of his disastrous fight. That ends their love.

But even that perspective is queered. As bouncer Collin was just doing his duty, trying to get the dunk to take his flaming drink back into the bar. Which we see, the positive or the negative, the action or its context, depends upon our given bias. And on our ability to acknowledge and to transcend our biases. 
In its ambition, achievement and nuanced success this could be the best American film so far this year.