Fruitvale Station is based on a true story. And that’s what makes us cringe.
It’s a narrative we’ve by now internalized: an unarmed young black male is brutally murdered by white cops or civilians. The act goes virtually unpunished to the instant outrage of many empathetic black and fewer sympathetic white observers. The pent up fusion of intense disbelief, fury, and eventual despondency lasts days, weeks, months, even up to a couple of years—before the anger recedes, life moves apologetically forward, and a comparable event transpires yet again, in a different time and place.
Director/writer Ryan Coogler proceeds down this familiar storyline, but he captures a side that the media and previous storytellers can hardly sensationalize. In Fruitvale, his feature debut, Mr. Coogler grants the power of speech to the victim. Rather than Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) having his story told by reporters, witnesses, family, friends, or worse, assailants, Oscar is able to give his own eulogy.
And for that, audiences are particularly watchful.
The gunshot fired in the beginning of the film and a still body obscured by a uniformed officer’s girth, seen from the vantage of a shaky cell phone camera, foreshadow the impending doom that is to come on that fateful New Year’s Eve in 2009.
Besides that climactic sequence of tension on the crowded subway, which stopped at Oakland, California’s Fruitvale Station, the film moves quietly as we observe the ordinary subtleties of the last day in Oscar’s life.
We remember Oscar for his charm as well as his mistakes. What seem to be trivial occurrences—a brief stint in jail, a passing involvement with illegal substances, and rickety unemployment—lead to a lifetime of maladies. Oscar is wholly unaware of how these actions present for him a path of little mobility.
Mr. Coogler makes a point to show that obliviousness towards the vicissitudes of life mars everyone. Oscar’s new-found friend, Katie (Ahna O’Reilly), adorns an even bigger cloud of naiveté that is at times innocuous.
Katie is clueless about how to cook, or even purchase, fish. It is also her innocent calling out Oscar on the subway that leads to him being recognized by a formerly incarcerated, rival inmate. Shortly after, Katie finds it utterly incomprehensible why the police would confront Oscar and his friends with such malevolence.
From the eyes of Oscar’s adversary on the subway and under the hypercritical gaze of a racially-charged society, Oscar has trouble distinguishing himself from that species of violent black man who is so often profiled in shadowy lineups on the news. Despite turning over a new leaf in his life, dumping his stash into the ocean, others still diagnose Oscar as just another thug causing trouble.
Unlike Hollywood’s based on a true story films, this independent feature doesn’t leave us with a warm and fuzzy feeling. True stories don’t normally sort themselves out in three short acts.
Hardly does the main character leave prior to the film’s end. After following Oscar’s escapades for over an hour, we feel that void that hollows the walls in the hospital waiting room where his family and friends mourn his passing.
Following the shooting, Oscar’s family and friends play the “if only” game where everyone speculates about what they could have done differently to avoid the inevitable. The girlfriend (Melonie Diaz) blames herself for urging Oscar to go out that night when all he wanted to do was stay home and chill. The mother (Octavia Spencer) insists she was the one who urged Oscar to take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit a.k.a. the subway) when he simply wanted to circumvent the crowd and drive.
Or what if Oscar and his friends had just sat on the sidewalk quietly and obediently while the police cuffed them?
The resounding echoes of black cinema and society join in on this chorus of hypotheticals:
If only Sal wouldn’t have opened the door to serve the neighborhood kids an after hours slice…if only Trayvon didn’t have the munchies for some iced tea and Skittles…or if Radio Raheem woulda just turned down the damn radio!
One incident can be boiled down to coincidence, but a string of misfortune for young black men reeks of something greater—something so systemic, institutional, and momentous that it cannot be eradicated with fantasies of alternate endings.
Twenty-four years ago in Do The Right Thing (1989) was a glimpse of a truth so gripping it earned then-budding filmmaker Spike Lee a Palme d’Or and an Oscar nomination. The same fate could happen for Ryan Coogler—that is if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters dare to acknowledge this incessant violence of white men against black men.
It goes without saying that a statuette will never suffice to atone for blanketed injustice, in this case, more notches of African American male on the proverbial holster.
Oscar Grant is Radio Raheem and Emmett Till and Travyon Martin and Darius Simmons and Jonathan Ferrell and sadly so many others who have prematurely exited our midst or who unsuspectingly have their bags of otherworldly possessions packed before the door of no return.
In following Oscar Grant, Mr. Coogler’s film gives voice to all these men and invites spectators to behold and even probe the plight of the black male victim.
Director/Writer: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Octavia Spencer as Wanda, Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant, Melonie Diaz as Sophina, Ariana Neal as Tatiana, Ahna O’Reilly as Katie
Sad. Sad. Sad. Just plain sad.
I think it’s sad that anyone is shot and killed. But let’s get this straight, how about the many black men who are killed by their fellow black men? Is that just plain hatred too? Racism too? White Institutional psychopathy too? I think you would beg to differ. But if we want to argue that black men are killed too often, let us put into perspective that the ‘too often’ is by black men killing black men, nothing to do with white men or the cops.
Oh Kane! That is just so disrespectful? What? What are you talking about? So let take your logic bit by bit.
1. Do you know that white men kill each other too? It’s not like there’s no violence in white communities across the country. Hell, how many black men have been involved in mass shootings lately? Hmm… white men kill white people too! And in many numbers.
2. This leads to my second point. When people live in a community where there’s violence, often that violence is directed towards one another.
3. So yes, black men kill black men too, just like white men kill white people! Not that all this violence should not be addressed. This needs attention too.
4. But when white men venture out of their own communities to kill black men, especially for absolutely no reason – not a beef, or for no good law enforcement reason, then it begs the question, what’s wrong with these white men?
5. Or better yet, what’s wrong with the system that allows white men and white police officers to go around killing black men?
— Perhaps is it a the same reason, or the lack of reason, why white men go about killing themselves? Say, in those mass shootings? If yes, then its a countrywide issue. If no, then it is particularly a black issue, because if black men came into your communities and shot your white men like that, you wouldn’t like it neither, regardless of how much you and your fellow white men are killing each other for the money or the blow, I guess.
Capisce?
The life of a black man in America is meaningless. If this was happening anywhere else in the world, everyone will be on the streets protesting until the perpetrators are brought to book or the system is entirely changed.
But not in wonderful America, where slavery still rears its ugly head – black men’s lives are worthless. Sad but from all indication it is true. Michael B Jordan, we pour out water and liquor to your lasting memory, enjoy the home of your ancestors.
All my n-ggas who fell victim to white brutality – I pour out liquor for y’all. Rest in peace! There’s a heaven for a G.
Maybe one day this kind of police brutality on black men will also stop, like slavery, and then perhaps white people, like Lincoln, can tap themselves on the shoulder once again that they have been able to move past another block of primitive discrimination – this racism!