Fruitvale Station

Rated R for some violence, language throughout and some drug use     

90 minutes

The Oscar race officially began for me with Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station.  

 Coogler won the 2013 Cannes Film Festival’s Prix de l'avenir - a "future" award, meaning essentially that Coogler is a talent to watch.   

He took home both The Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.  It looks like I am not alone in my thoughts.

The emotional toll Fruitvale Station took on me is hard to describe.  If you are like me, you hadn’t even heard of this movie – let alone the inspiration behind the film, Oscar Grant.  The subject matter is eerily familiar when reading recent headlines..a day in the life of a young, unarmed black man who was shot and killed on New Year’s Day 2009.  This film hit extremely close to hom.

The 27 year old Coogler began writing the script for his directorial debut when he was a film student at USC.  His ability to let his audience sit in the truth of the life of Oscar Grant was something I had never experienced before.  He didn’t try to make Oscar seem perfect, he didn’t try to make every white person the enemy. Without forcing any social or racial undertones onto us, he simply let Michael B. Jordan breathe life into the man who was Oscar Grant.   

Grant will frustrate you.  You will root for him.  You will want to wring his neck.  You will feel like you are his mother or his father.  At the end of the day – and I mean that most literally - you will sob for him.  You will beg God to make the ending different.  You will pray out loud with his mother (played tenderly by Octavia Spencer):  “Let’s keep him lifted up, y’all.”

Bottom of Form

“Fruitvale Station” begins with actual cell phone footage of Grant’s run-in with the transit police following a fight on a train.  You hear the sound of a single gunshot followed by onlooker’s gasps of disbelief. 

From there, Coogler rewinds the day to show us Grants last day of 2008.  I was most impressed with Cooglers ability to  remain in control – he just invites us along to witness the reality of this man’s last day.  He never points fingers.

Michael B. Jordan’s ability to change the mood of the moment with just one eye twitch was uncanny.  The move reminds us he was human.  He could be caring, warm and tender and equally impulsive and quick to anger.

When his mother tries to convince him to take the train to be safe, you want to scream DON’T DO IT!!!

We all know (or at least assume if you didn’t follow the 2009 headlines) how “Fruitvale Station” ends.   But somehow Coogler makes this film gut wrenching to watch.

You pray somehow this story will end differently, right up until the last credits run.  You will leave the theater in silence.  You will lift him up in prayer.