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| The Weinstein Company |
In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009, 22-year-old Oscar
Grant III was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit policeman at the
Fruitvale Station in Oakland, California.
The ensuing days were filled with protests both peaceful and violent,
and the police officer’s trial captivated a city and a nation filled with
sadness and anger. Fruitvale Station, the first feature film by Ryan Coogler,
documents and dramatizes the last day of Grant’s life, with the lead role
played by Friday Night Lights and Chronicle star Michael B. Jordan. The film, which premiered at Sundance in 2013
and went on to win both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, is quietly
powerful, an honest and heartwarming slice of life that turns to tragedy in
slow motion. Also starring Melonie Diaz
as Grant’s girlfriend Sophina, Octavia Spencer as his mother, and Kevin Durand
as the officer that takes his life, the film arrives at an especially
appropriate time in our nation, making it not only a great drama but, in a
sense, an important cultural touchstone.
Nowadays our multiplexes are stuffed with explosive-ridden
action blockbusters and cash-grabby children’s films, and even when one does
come across the rare drama or comedy that managed to sneak out of the arthouse
cinema, they usually contain a small dosage of snark. Fruitvale
Station is an exception to that rule, a movie not only lacking in that cynicism
but filled with a sense of reality.
There’s a quiet nature to the first hour of the film as we follow Oscar
through his final day, buying groceries for his mom, picking up his young
daughter, the light of his life, from school, stopping to get gas. As with any dramatization of a real person’s
life, there are arguably places where creating tension and conflict trump the
accuracy of the story, but those moments are relatively few. For the most part, the film retains that
sense of honesty, of being less cinematic and more genuine. There’s a scene that comes towards the middle
of the film, wherein Oscar, Sophina, and their daughter are meeting the family
for a birthday party. The women are in the kitchen cooking gumbo, the men are
in the living room shooting the breeze, the handheld camera stays low and
close, there’s idle chatter and the sound of bowls and knives clinking and it
all feels so warm and real. For a minute you forget that these are actors
in a dramatization and instead see a simple average family, perhaps like your
own, making a birthday dinner. It’s the
kind of trick very few films are able to pull off, but when it’s done successfully
it feels like magic. The strength of
this connection is ultimately paid off in the final scenes of the film, Oscar
Grant’s last moments on the platform at Fruitvale Station, and it is without a
doubt one of the most emotionally brutal scenes I have seen on screen in some time. My heart raced more during
the closing fifteen minutes of Fruitvale
Station than any other blockbuster I saw this summer, a rousing testament
to the filmmaking, the story and the character work.
None of that reality could have been created without the
actors, and the cast here delivers some of the best dramatic performances I've
seen this year, the most notable coming from Michael B. Jordan and Octavia
Spencer. Jordan’s star in Hollywood has
risen at a breakneck speed over the past several years, from a small part on The Wire to a leading role in the
superhero drama Chronicle, and he
turns in his best work yet as Oscar Grant III.
There’s a feeling of barely-contained desperation in his character, a
man fighting against the tide of his criminal past and struggling towards a
better future, and it’s balanced so expertly with this genuine sense of love
and charm and warmth. His chemistry with
his family is electric, with Melonie Diaz as his girlfriend and Spencer as his
mother but especially with young Ariana Neal as his daughter Tatiana, and it
makes the inevitable final moments in the film that much more heart-wrenching
to watch. Octavia Spencer turns in an
equally powerful performance as Oscar’s mother Wanda, a woman who loves her son
dearly but pains to see him struggle. If
her tete-a-tete with Jordan during the film’s only flashback sequence were her
only work here, she would still be a powerful player, but it’s her role in the
last tragic scenes that solidify her position as a terrific and emotional
actress. Her transformation from a
mother filled with love to one who has lost the world is astounding; few performances
have quieted a theater quite like hers in this film.
Director Coogler knows the story that he is telling and
delivers it with a stunning sense of presence and humanity, for not only the
Grant family but for a community that was forever changed. His film
arrives at a fortuitous time in our culture, one that some might call fortunate
and others the exact opposite. From the
flares of bigotry in the CBS reality show Big
Brother, to the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act, to the
media circus that surrounded the Trayvon Martin case, the subject of racism is
currently at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. Fruitvale
Station doesn’t shy away from said subject, doesn’t cloak it in any sort of
subtlety, but instead puts its foot forward, presents the story of a struggling
man lifted up by his friends and family and subsequently shot down by the cruel
nature of bigotry, and says “This is a problem.” From there it leaves the audience, stunned
into silence, to wonder what was right, what was wrong, and, most importantly,
where we can go from here. When a film
presents its message with so strength and conviction, one cannot help but be
moved.
Grade: A-
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