First of all, I am not saying that OBAA was a bad movie or that it had bad performances, or that it did not have a diverse cast.
I'm not trying to besmirch the good names of Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti or Shayne A McHale AKA "Junglepussy". As I finish that sentence I can't help but wonder what road I may be driving off.
But hear me out (and beware there are spoilers).
First OBAA has Leonardo DiCaprio...I mean, I feel like this is self explanatory. And his character is a hippie pot smoking "revolutionist".
Second, it's helmed by P.T.Anderson...how much more liberal Whiteness can we get there? Magnolia. Punch-Drunk Love. Boogie Nights. Cigarettes & Coffee.
All great movies. Starring White People.
The canvas is set because you don't do all those movies with casts so trắng and move away from that (I mean one can argue it's almost impossible).
Does it get into immigrant struggles, BIPOC struggles, etc.
Yes.
But it's all done in many ways (with some exceptions simply because of what the actors brought) through the eyes of a White lens. White stories. It's like Operation Babylift--sure there were Vietnamese on those planes but the stories are told by White people, where in many ways, it's less about the Vietnamese babies and more about the people "saving" them.
Perfidia was in a weird love triangle with a racist White guy and pot-smoking-didn't-understand-her White guy who btw happens to be named "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun. Some could argue she's the Black man trope in a woman's body. And you can have some crazy BFWM dynamics but who dedicates a large portion of the movie to said racist White guy trying to find and then have his daughter killed while having that countered with a pot smoking step-in dad trying to find her, taking care of business while the Black mother is gone?
White people. They eat that up.
For a moment, why not delve into the possible and say she has that baby on her back fighting the revolution. Showing her the tools of the trade, molding her into that strong Black daughter. Why must she abandon her and move into the shadows?
Who controls what Willa knows about her mom?
The answers are all White people.
Compare it to Sinners.
Original screenplay.
Mainly BIPOC cast.
Through the lens of POC trying to make their own way in a White world.
A Black writer and director.
If we look at Sinners addressing the same issues as OBAA, just in a different time, we see completely different ways it handles the storyline, the characters, the history.
Everything about Sinners is what great cinema is supposed to be. It has layers upon layers of histories and dreams rooted in the past, connecting us as viewers. It's camera work, the direction, the acting, the storylines--those luscious shots out in the country deep with so much weight in beauty and tragedy.
We're there in the Blues. The music that opens gateways. Delta Slim (and as an aside, why is that White actors who play roles of drunks and drug addicts get far more praise than Black and other POC actors who do the same--is it because some people don't think it's that much of a stretch for non-White actors?).
We're in worlds both known and unknown, celebrating life, telling the story of struggle and revolution.
And to be honest, I don't know if liberal White people got it as much as POC did.
I don't know if it interested them as much, even though they have similar themes.
It's almost as if there is that feeling of allyship without real friendship and understanding.
And to me some aspects of the endings tell the real story--Colonel Lockjaw in OBAA dies at the hands of the Christmas Avengers, which we should root for, but the Xmas Avengers are still there. The racist White guys still win and the family is still estranged--albeit being kept together by the White Savior Leo.
In Sinners, Smoke cleans up the Klan, killing all the Klan members there, sacrificing his life, reuniting with Annie and his daughter, while Stack lives on--living a dream of being a Black man controlling his own destiny with limitless power (albeit as a vampire--because nothing is free).
When you think about what Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan created together (and thankfully they both got Oscars for their achievements) in comparison to OBAA and the world they made, Sinners is the real.
There's just no way around it.
And just like Stack says---give me the real.
P.S.
And let's always remember the power of those ending credit scenes intertwined with the music that was the lifeblood of the film, and how they tie so much together, and as viewers, how they also gave us surprise and wonderment.
