Fruitvale Station: Reality Hollywood Style

Fruitvale Station (2013) Written and directed by:  Ryan Coogler

Starring:  Michael P. Jordan, Melonie Diaz and Octavia Spencer

Running time:  85 minutes Gross:  $15,192,000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxUJwJfcQaQ      (trailer)

Fruitvale Station is writer/director Ryan Coogler’s first full-length feature. It won the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the Best American Film Award at the Traverse City Film Festival, as well as a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

This independent, American film, distributed by The Weinstein Company, is a drama-tization of the last twenty-four hours in the life of 22- year old, Oscar Grant, the unarmed African- American young man who was shot and killed by a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer on New Year’s Eve, 2009 while returning home to Oakland with his girlfriend and some friends after celebrating New Year’s watching a fireworks display in San Francisco. Oscar (Michael B. Jordan) was in the midst of turning his life around. As the film shows in several flashback sequences, Oscar spent time in prison for selling mari-juana and lost his job as a butcher’s apprentice. The film also shows Oscar putting an end to his personal smoking habit and trying to get his job back, all in an attempt to become a “better man” for the three most important people in his life-his mother, played by Octavia Spencer, his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and his 5-year old daughter on whom he lovingly dotes.

But, according to the series of events depicted in the film, the universe had another plan for Oscar. His good deeds and prudent decisions lead him straight into a situation that spirals out of his control and ends tragically on the Fruitvale Station platform on that fateful New Year’s morning. Coogler uses a documentary-style approach to recount the last hours of Oscar’s life and his relationships, giving the film  a great deal of verisimilit-ude, as well as gritty realism. However, Coogler also does some embellishing (according to those familiar with Oscar and the events). One such liberty the filmmaker takes is the inclusion of the scene in which, earlier in the day at a gas station, Oscar runs to the aid of a dog that is hit by a car right in front of him. He cries out in anguish for help, and cradles the dog as it dies. Reportedly, this incident did not happen, and the scene is clearly meant to elicit pathos from the audience. It would be a shame if Coogler felt he had to do this and more, in order for the audience to find what happens to Oscar an absolute tragedy that did not have to happen. Is the fact that, by all accounts, Oscar in no way instigated or did anything to put into motion the tragic course of events that unfolded at the Fruitvale Station not enough for an audience to respond  with a rational call for social change, or at the very least, the opening of a national dialogue? Perhaps Coogler’s goal was to go beyond the indie niche market and reach the mainstream audience and he did not have enough faith in a mainstream audience’s ability to be objective when judging the victim’s character and the logic of the fate that befalls him. Did he feel the audience would vilify Oscar if he were less than the saint he depicts him as? It would have been interesting to see the response to a film with a less perfect, more realistic depiction of the victim.

But in all, the documentary-style works well, especially in the climactic, chaotic scene on the platform. Coogler manages to make it feel as if we are watching the actual footage captured on cell phones by witnesses. (click on link to view witness footage)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUHdROcwsjM

It is a tense and disturbing scene, and its lack of embellishment make it arguably the film’s  best. It is devoid of Coogler’s sanitization of the protagonist and the film’s overall heavy-handed sentimentality that borders on the maudlin, a la Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, without the hand-held camera work, mostly ambient lighting, abrupt ending, and the wonderfully un-Hollywood “Indie Queen” Melonie Diaz as Oscar’s girlfriend, this film could easily be mistaken for traditional Hollywood fare, with a clear and convenient distinction between “good guy” and “bad guy.” One would expect a more fleshed-out protagonist with more visible conflict, and a less one-dimensional depiction of the antagonists (in this case, the police, as well as the almost cartoonish depiction of Oscar’s ex-prison mate who recognizes him on the train and initiates the brawl) in an indie, as indie films do strive to portray humans as we are-a mixed bag of good and bad, often clueless creatures whose actions and consequences are all too often hazy, undecipher-able and sometimes nonsensical.

By far, the most critical artistic choice of this film is Coogler’s omission of the trial that was to follow, in which the officer who claims to have shot Oscar accidentally, thinking he pulled out his taser instead of his gun, is indicted and eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He also leaves out even the slightest hint of the officer’s and at least one witness’s (one of Oscar’s friends) claim that he said, “I’m gonna tase him,”and when he realized he shot him instead, puts his hands on his face in shock. Of course, only the people there that night know if these claims are factual, and even at that, the unreliability of witnesses’s memories is long known, which all gives the filmmaker license. But without a doubt, including these details would have forced the audience to make a decision on a far less cut-and-dry situation. It would require the audience, as a true indie film does, to grapple with a more esoteric and complex issue, which, in this case, is the current state of race relations in America, if and how it affects the criminal justice system and what happens on these all too often contentious American streets.