“Fruitvale Station”
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ariana Neal
Biography, Drama
90 Mins
R

*Warning: Spoilers follow. If you are unfamiliar with the true-life 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station event, don’t read on.*

As the lights pull up on Fruitvale Station, there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater. No one was hustling to get out first. Cell phones weren’t clicking on left and right. For once, everyone was somber, respectful and obviously moved by what they had just seen. In fact, in the midst of the moments where the film goes mute, lingering on lost moments, you could have heard a pin drop. That palpable, humbling silence is proof of the magnetizing power of Ryan Coogler‘s first feature film. Like Muhammad Ali, he floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.

Opening with real cell phone footage of the 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station incident -in which a motionless, handcuffed 22-year old African American, named Oscar Grant, is shot in the back and killed by a police for no evident reason – we’re jolted into the tragedy to unfold. Rather than make us uncomfortable hostages to another “important story,” the hovering camerawork and winning, congenial tone invite us into the fold.
Ex-jailbird, Oscar is a member of a loving, supportive family. He’s got the good fortune of a loving daughter and a forgiving baby-mama but he just can’t seem to get his act together. Trying to internalize Oprah’s mantra that “it takes 30 days to form a habit”, he’s seeking a new life that won’t result in a third prison sentence and further in more time spent away from his little girl.

Taking a real-world event and transforming it from just another tragedy to shake our heads at into a visceral theatrical experience, Coogler has done more than the average filmmaker. He has made a film with a razor sharp point that grabs us by the neck, pats us on the head, and then sits us down for a talk about why daddy is gone.

Speaking of his intentions behind the film, Coogler claims, “I wanted the audience to get to know this guy, to get attached, so that when the situation that happens to him happens, it’s not just like you read it in the paper, you know what I mean? When you know somebody as a human being, you know that life means something.” In this goal, Coogler has succeed tremendously.

The merciless gunning down of a two-time felon like Oscar Grant, played here with sterling commitment by Michael B. Jordan, is easily overlooked in the grand scheme of national calamities. We live in a world peppered with headlines of worldwide manhunts, massive bombings, increasing firearm massacres and counts upon counts of gang violence. In a way, we’ve become so accustomed to the shit that we don’t bother to notice another dump in an ocean stained brown. From the distant confines of our living rooms, it’s easy to shrug off these horror stories and go about our daily lives. It isn’t even entitlement, it’s Psycology 101. If we were to break down over every single case of injustice across the globe, mulling over each and every catastrophe, we wouldn’t make it to the supermarket without melting into a full-blown nervous wreck. We don’t get bogged down because we can’t. We blunt ourselves because the abominations of reality are too abundant to process.

But when it’s in our cities, in our towns, in our families, there is nothing more emotionally crippling than the loss of someone who’ve known and loved. This is Coogler’s aim; to introduce us to a man and see the resulting devastation when he is ripped away as hostilely and abruptly as a Brazilian wax. Like a top spinning and spinning and spinning and then woefully split onto its side, the true life affair is reeling with life and then suddenly, harrowingly still. We feel this resounding loss deep in our souls, shaken from our apathetic sidelines. But instead of trying to rub our noses in our indifference, Coogler has respectfully set out to present us with the full package that is Oscar Grant – the good with the bad.

Does Coogler reach too far trying to make Oscar a relatable character? Maybe, but, in all honesty, isn’t that the point? I never knew the man outside the context of the film but I feel like I got to know someone here. Whether he was an invention or not, I cared about him and it made it that much more devastating when he is gunned down like a dog in the street.

The point is, this could have happened to any of us. Coogler’s not trying to turn Oscar into a martyr or a saint, he’s just a normal guy in shitty circumstances. Do these so-called circumstances have to do with him being black? Most certainly. In this, Coogler cuts to the heart of an unsettling cultural epoch that accepts racial stereotyping as commonplace police methodology. Driving the film into something more than a mere biopic, Coogler’s is a stinging indictment holding the cruel reality of a modern police force where racism has come to fester and thrive up to the light.

Fleshing out what feels so much like a true recounting of events, Jordan is a sensation. He commits fully to his role, disappearing into it with warm familiarity. A prison-bound scene in which he demands a hug from his mother is especially affecting and could earn Jordan an Oscar nom on its own. As Oscar’s loving but stern mother, Octavia Spencer is a powerhouse – throttling between a strong matriarch and a grieving mother who’s life force is sapped by the loss of her baby child. As she weeps over him, it’s impossible to not feel a lump growing like a balloon in your throat.

But Fruitvale Station doesn’t bank on the brand of weepy, sentimental tearjerkers that leaves you with the bad taste of manipulation. It’s something entirely different and entirely beautiful – a genuinely power, superbly acted trainwreck spilling over with throbbing purpose. Even for those not absolutely spellbound, it would take an incredible degree of jaded indifference to shrug this powerful experience off.