MOVIE REVIEW: Fruitvale Station, why this portrait of a young black man MUST be seen.

 

There are seminal films that explore the human condition and specifically the realities of urban America. Do the Right Thing and Boyz in the Hood immediately come to mind. I believe we can now add Fruitvale Station to the mix of movies that create an image that flies in the face of media stereotypes and more importantly offers an honest look beyond the headlines. Fruitvale Station is an intimate look at the life of Oscar Grant in the 24 hour run up to his untimely and horrifying murder.

The Story
In 2009, Oscar Grant was fatally shot in the back by a transit officer at Fruitvale Station of the BART system shortly after midnight on News Years Eve. He was on his way home from celebrating in San Francisco with friends. In an altercation captured on cell phone video the case garnered national outrage and attention due to the senseless horror of his death. He left behind a 4-year old daughter, a family and a life unfulfilled. He was was 22 years old.

As a movie
Fruitvale Station is a difficult, heartbreaking, outrage inducing, honest portrait of a young man who was so much more than the sum of his parts. First time filmmaker Ryan Coogler offers a quiet peek into a moment in the life of Oscar Grant during the 24 hours that precede his death. The moving script was written from first hand accounts and countless family interviews ultimately providing the audience a riveting look at this flawed, loving, angry young man who is trying to find his path in life.

This is simply one of the most painful movies I have watched. Knowing the outcome going in does not buffer that pain. On the contrary it heightens the inevitable outcome of this life being snuffed out at the precise moment you see its potential. Coogler doesn't seek to build Grant up as merely a victim of profiling nor does he sanctify him. Instead he directs us through an unvarnished look at a day in the life of a young black man. One who is a father, a son, an individual struggling with balancing bravado, ego and stereotypes that would all seek to define him.

To understand the sadness and outrage, viewers need to be able to glimpse through the prism of what that community of people sees. In Oscar Grant we get a young man struggling to pivot from the mistakes he made in his desperation to carve out a life not only for his daughter, but for himself. He wants to be better, he's just unsure of how. Over the course of the film we learn that Grant (marvelously played by Michael B. Jordan) loves his girlfriend, but has cheated on her, is trying to go straight after serving time in prison for dealing drugs, but was fired from his supermarket job for repeatedly showing up late. It is a typical two steps forward, one step back dance most people endure in their 20s. In Fruitvale Station we get a full idea of the man, not just the circumstances that placed him in an altercation that ended his life and the tragedy that he is never afforded the time or space to overcome those mistakes.

This movie does not work without the extraordinary performance of Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant. Jordan quietly (and often in tight frame) captures the nuance around how quickly emotions rise into physical response and are repressed as his temper cools. His scenes with Octavia Spencer, playing Grant's mother are truthful, the image of a tired woman who loves her son but is at the breaking point surrounding his choices. The interplay with his young daughter give important insight that Oscar wasn't the only victim that night. Through her we see how much Oscar Grant had to live for and the innocence he desperately tried to preserve in her. 

The re-enactment of the murder is excruciating to watch and it should be. However I appreciate Cooger's restraint in how he shot the series of scenes forcing us to see without graphically sensationalizing the moment. The closing moments of the film will leave you emotionally distraught and in my case haunted. It is a terrific piece of film making and needs to be seen.


As a conversation
I almost didn't see Fruitvale Station. I thought long and hard about subjecting myself to the raw emotions I knew it would invoke based solely on the story. Then I realized if we don't look in the mirror at the hard societal truths we can't make progress as a society. I don't get a pass on that mirror simply because I have a predisposition to be empathetic.

In response to the coincidence of the film opening in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict, Ryan Coogler said of the public depiction for both Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant "They're either a martyr and a saint, or everything they ever did was wrong. The truth is more complicated." In Fruitvale Station he succeeds at showing us that complexity.

If you want to have an honest conversation about race and bias turn off the likes of MSNBC, Fox and CNN along with their combined punditry and arm chair sociology. Instead go see Fruitvale Station with a group of colleagues or friends. Take a look at the honest portraits of the struggles, flawed decency and humanity of what young men of color actually look like. Then reconcile it with the images you see and hear through media everyday. If we don't filter what is fiction vs. what is real what dystopia will we be passing along for our children? Worse than that, we will continue to condemn an entire class of young people to a stereotype that leaves them not caught between a rock and a hard place, but in the cross-hairs of a gun and dead on the cement floor.