Fruitvale Station
follows a man’s final day on Earth. He wakes up, plans a party, drives around,
picks up his daughter, visits his mom, rides a train and then gets shot in the
back by a cop while he’s facedown on the ground.
The man is Oscar Grant III and we ultimately know what happens to
him because the film opens — like a punch to the gut — with the real cell phone
footage of his death. The 2009 video is grainy and shaky, and you can barely
make out what’s happening until you see the unmistakable silhouette of a
handgun and then a lone pop. This is
the footage that was played in court, inspired protests and incited riots. It’s
the footage that tells everything about the Oscar Grant story, and yet nothing
about Oscar Grant.
Fruitvale Station
opened last week. I wasn’t able to review it then, but I saw it last weekend
and it had such a profound effect on me that I had to double-back to tell you
about it. It’s held together by a promising new director and screenwriter, Ryan
Coogler, and by three outstanding performances by Michael B. Jordan, Melonie
Diaz and Octavia Spencer.
Jordan, who I will forever remember as the naïve young drug
dealer Wallace on HBO’s The Wire,
plays Grant, an ex-con with a history of drug dealing who decides it’s time to
course correct his life when he ditches his drug stash into the Oakland Bay. It
seems doubtful that Grant would dump his stash the same day of his death, but
the film takes some dramatic liberties with the chronology to pack as much as it
can into Grant’s final day. Another unlikely foreshadowing event: Grant is
gassing up his car when he witnesses a pit bull get hit by a truck. He cradles
the dog’s head as it takes its final breaths.
Fruitvale Station makes
a distinct point to show us how Grant was not a saint. He struggled with drugs,
he cheated on his girlfriend Sophina (Diaz), he frequently disappointed his
doting mother (Spencer) and he couldn’t seem to hold onto a job. In an early
scene he nearly assaults his boss when he won’t give Grant back a position he
was fired from weeks before. These flaws seem to directly contradict Grant’s
kind disposition, on full display when he picks up his daughter from school or
when he charms a grumpy storeowner into letting his friends use a bathroom reserved
only for employees. In another scene, he dials up his grandmother so she can
explain how to fry fish to a complete stranger. The stranger, taken aback by
Grant’s hoodie and long white T-shirt, seems shocked at herself for judging him
by his appearance alone.
These dueling sides of Oscar Grant don’t ultimately matter
though, especially at the Fruitvale BART station, where Grant and others are
hauled off a train after a fight breaks out. The police don’t know Grant is a
compassionate father, and they haven’t run his license to know that he has a
long rap sheet either. The police only know what they see in front of them. And
at some point, one of them saw a deadly threat. (The police officer, later
convicted of involuntarily manslaughter, claims he meant to grab and fire his
taser.)
Did race play a factor? The movie doesn’t really take a stance on
the issue, instead presenting Grant’s last day as a memorial to his good nature
and perseverance. It’s hard not to see race, though, especially when trying to
imagine what would have happened had Oscar and all his friends been white
instead of black. At the very least, Grant joins Emmett Till, James Byrd Jr.
and Trayvon Martin, whose last journeys home proved fatal and then opened up a
national dialogue about being black in America.
The movie nudges you into thinking about race, but never pushes
or shoves. Really though, this incredible must-see movie
is more about Oscar Grant and how he had so much potential in him before he was facedown on a train platform with cop’s knee in his head. He had hopes and dreams and a family willing to cheer him on wherever he went next.
And then he was gone. That’s a tragedy no matter what color you
are.
