George Zimmerman's defense team essentially put Trayvon
Martin on trial, so maybe the prosecution should have called Oscar Grant to
testify. If it didn't make a difference that Trayvon was dead, the fact that
Oscar was dead shouldn't have been an obstacle either -- he might have been
especially qualified, since both Oscar and Trayvon were black men gunned down
in their prime by those supposedly watching out for public safety.
Fortunately, in the new film Fruitvale Station, Oscar Grant is essentially a character witness for Trayvon, and for scores of other young black men who've died at the hands of "law enforcement'. Oscar, only 22, was shot on New Year's Eve, 2008, by a BART subway police officer in Northern California. The details of his demise are so extreme they seem like they'd have to be one-of-a-kind: Oscar, an unarmed black subway passenger who was not being violent when the officers decided to arrest him, was shot dead in the back while prone, face-down, on the Fruitvale station platform, in full view of a packed train of witnesses. The defense claimed by white BART cop Johannes Mehserle was that he mistook his gun for a taser. Consequently, he received a sentence of just 2 years -- and served only 11 months.
But behind the specifics of Oscar Grant's horrific tragedy lies the even greater horror and tragedy inherent in the fact that this kind of extra-judicial execution is commonplace. A recent study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement found that 136 unarmed blacks were shot dead last year by police, security guards, and self-appointed vigilantes. This adds up to an extra-judicial killing of an African-American every 28 hours. The new film doesn't address these stats, but it certainly stems from that kind of awareness.
The fiction feature Fruitvale Station, winner of big prizes at the Sundance and Cannes Festivals, requires a generous supply of Kleenex. Though its simple presentation is elegant and spare, it makes you weep not just for Oscar and his family, or for Trayvon and his, but for the state of America in general. Without preaching or heavy-handedness, with the utmost of subtlety, first-time writer-director Ryan Coogler shows convincingly that something is very wrong out there.
Though the genre is character study, this drama is named after the infamous subway station. It isn't titled after Oscar, I suspect, because the socially-urgent point of this carefully researched docudrama is that Oscar didn't die because of anything he did, but because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if you're a young, poor, black man in America, it can be the wrong place and wrong time almost anywhere, almost anytime.
Coogler does use some of the actual cell phone camera footage of the incident as an opening prelude, but his focus in the film is on supplying the visuals that have been missing from our consciousness: how Oscar spent his last day alive. He shows us what Oscar valued, what he regretted, and what he hoped for, making sure we get to know Oscar intimately so we can truly mourn for him. The script, which Coogler wrote after perusing the cell phone footage, interviewing the family, and researching Oscar's life and character, depicts Oscar as a loving young father and boyfriend, a considerate son who actually listens to his mom these days, and a likeable family man whose grandmother dotes on him.
Oscar, charismatically played with what seems like
effortless naturalness by Michael B. Jordan, is a complex person here. He is
often joyfully childlike, especially when playing with his 4-year old daughter
Tatiana (played by Ariana Neal, a great find) yet he also falls into deep,
serious introspection over the course of the day. He does seem to genuinely
love his girlfriend Sophina, a feisty and very watchable Melonie Diaz, and he
genuinely wants them to have a future together. Yet he also has a penchant to
flirt, and he has been caught doing much more. Moreover, he has trouble showing
up on time for work, and has lost his job because of it. When the movie starts,
he is preparing to sell drugs again to pay the rent.
Fruitvale Station doesn't
hide Oscar's prison record, in fact it brings it to the fore by turning it into
a long flashback and by showing that Oscar's mother Wanda (a towering Octavia
Spencer) was at one point so upset by his repeat convictions -- apparently for
dealing -- that she hardened her heart against him for a difficult period of
time. Now, he is torn between the life he wants to lead and the life he has
led, conflicted and confused but also very close to his siblings, elders, and
nuclear family. Part of the message, of course, is that people don't fall into
either/or polarities, that just because a black man isn't a genteel scion of
accomplishment like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, it doesn't mean that he's a vicious incorrigible
criminal who threatens the social fabric.
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