Rarely do I feel moved to write about a work of art, but I did after my spouse and I saw Blindspotting at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland last week.  I was touched by what a relational movie it is.  Central to the movie are themes of racism, policing, gentrification and how these issues affect so many aspects of the main characters’ lives.  What struck me was how these themes were dealt with on an intimate person to person level as well as on the bigger societal relationships of groups to individuals, and groups to groups.  There are things to learn about blind spots we may have in intimate relationships, as well as in intergroup relationships, and about how these blindspots can remain or be changed.

The story is set in West Oakland and concerns two life-long best friends from the neighborhood.  Collin is an African American man just about to complete a post-jail year of probation in a half-way house, and Miles, who is Caucasian, works as his partner at a moving company.    Blindspotting highlights Collin and Miles’ friendship, as well as Collin’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend who did not visit him in jail but with whom he must still work at the moving company.  It also deals with the couple and parenting relationship between Miles and his partner.  And then there are many nuanced ways these characters interact with family and the world surrounding them.  We see people reacting to who Collin appears to be to them and to what they know of his past, even as he tries to change his life.  He conspicuously drinks disgusting Kale smoothies to show his ex- that he’s making healthier choices, but she’s not buying it.  And we see how Miles is the cause of a lot of the bad choices and danger around him and how Collin doesn’t recognize this, how he has a blindspot for Miles too.  These relationships raise questions about how people are seen based on who we are, how we appear, what we have done.  Moreover, it examines if people can really change, and if so, does the change get noticed by others.  It spoke to me about how attachment injuries only heal when they are recognized and then when we experience real, convincing change that is repeated until we trust it.  The movie shows situations when such change moments might be happening between Miles and Collin as well as in their couples and family relationships.  It also shows the challenge and potential of such change on a societal level where there are so many inter-group problems to address stemming from our blindspots, that are so toxic to trust between peoples.  I think the movie shows some examples of where such change might start to happen on an individual personal level while showing how exponentially harder it is on the bigger societal level.  And in some surprising moments in it also shows how sometimes it takes something big for us to see that a change might have happened.  Or sometimes we notice the change inside ourselves before anyone else does or is willing to trust it and then we have to nurture it within ourselves, and maybe eventually others will notice.  And Blindspotting also demonstrates how earlier visions we have of someone can blind us to ways they were not, and maybe are not good for us now.

Those are some of my attachment-lens musings about the movie.  Obviously there is a lot more that has been/will be written about this movie; I encourage you to get out to see it if you’d like a good thought provoking discussion starter.