Fruitvale Station By Ryan Coogler

Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” is devastating to watch, and yet also incredibly rewarding. A dramatized recreation of the final 24 hours Oscar Grant III’s life before being killed on New Year’s morning 2009, the movie opens with the actual video of Grant and a few of his friends being brutally harassed by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Police. We hear the onlookers yelling for the police to stop, to leave the kids alone. We see no response from the officers, except a muffled “I’m going to Tase him!” And then, we hear the shot ring out. And collectively, the onlookers gasp in horror.
Here’s what we know for sure: Oscar Grant, an African-American, was 22 on that New Year’s morning, when he and his friends were pulled off a train under suspicion of fighting aboard the train. After the group argued with the officers, Grant was forced onto his stomach. This was when Officer Johannes Mehserle stood and shot him in the back. Grant passed away a few hours later at a local hospital, and Mehserle (who claimed to have been reaching for his Taser and accidentally grabbed his firearm) was arrested. After the shooting, there was a great deal of protesting and rioting in the

Bay Area. Some time later, Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served 11 months of a two-year sentence.
In the wake of the George Zimmerman court case, “Fruitvale Station” couldn’t be more timely. It would have been easy for Coogler to craft his film to incite anger, thereby capitalizing on our country’s racial tensions. And yet he doesn’t. Coogler, as a native of Oakland, was living in the Bay Area a few years ago when this case was happening. And, in Coogler’s own words, “Oscar was either cast as a saint who had never done anything wrong in his life, or he was painted as a monster who got what he deserved that night.” He hopes that his film can be used to restore Grant’s “humanity.”
The film eschews the aftermath of the story – all of the protests, riots, and trials – and instead uses the film as a medium to tell a touching human story of Oscar Grant’s final day on Earth. What we see in “Fruitvale Station” is neither saint nor monster, but a man living his life after prison, trying to get a head start on his New Year’s Resolutions so he can make changes in his life. Coogler shows us a measure of a man, and all the triumphs and struggles that come along with it.
In doing some research after watching the film, I was surprised with how accurately “Fruitvale” retells the events of Oscar’s last day. Coogler spent considerable time aligning family testimonials, public records, and personal interviews into a cohesive timeline of Oscar’s last day.
We start by meeting Oscar and his close friends and family, his girlfriend and daughter, his mother and grandmother, some of his friends.

We watch as Oscar drops his 4 year-old off at daycare, carefully sneaks her an extra snack, and heads to the supermarket. There, we find out he has recently lost his job, and flash back to prison where Oscar spent roughly two years for drug offenses. We watch as he struggles with the decision to either deal drugs and make some money, or fail to pay rent. He puts on different masks for different people; some know he’s lost his job, others do not. Some know he is struggling, others think he has turned a corner. It seems clear that the only people in his life who get the ‘real’ Oscar are his girlfriend Sophina (played by Melonie Diaz) and his daughter Tatiana (Ariana

Neal).
In an interesting moment of social commentary, later in his night Oscar meets a young white couple who are pregnant with what I assumed to be their first child. Oscar strikes up a conversation after the man’s wife goes to the bathroom, and learns that his name is Peter. As luck would have it, Peter came from similar circumstances as Oscar: poor, without many great advantages in life, and resorted to theft to secure an engagement ring for his bride-to-be. But he has made something of himself to provide for his family, and now runs a successful business. The movie doesn’t ask, but it also doesn’t need to: Peter turned the corner in his life, but would Oscar have been able to? If their circumstances were flipped, would the overly aggressive BART police officers have pulled Peter off that train of New Year’s partygoers?
While there are certainly holes here and there, and a good degree of creative license was taken in instances where Oscar’s timeline couldn’t be accounted for, the film proceeds confidently towards its ultimate climax. Michael B. Jordan is outstanding as Oscar Grant; an award-worthy performance. He alone, perhaps more than anything else, makes the film so spectacular and yet so haunting. We know the ending. We know exactly what the film is heading so confidently towards, and seeing Oscar live through it is heartbreaking. And, when the final scenes play out, the audience is left to wonder what could have been for this young man.