Fruitvale Station

Two hours after midnight, New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Julius Grant III was killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police at the BART Fruitvale Station in Oakland, CA. He was returning home to Hayward with with a group of friends, including Sophina, the mother of his 4 year old daughter, Tatiana. They had been watching the New Year’s countdown in San Francisco. On the train ride home, a scuffle broke out, and transit police responded, pulling the group out onto the platform. There, during a tense four minute encounter filmed by several passengers, the youths (Grant was 22) were lined up, sitting, along a low concrete wall. Words were exchanged, the officers became anxious, and began to arrest Grant and the guy next to him. In the process, while Grant was lying on his stomach with a cop’s knee on his neck, he was shot once in the back. The officer involved thought he had drawn his Taser. He was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and served less than two years in state penitentiary.

These are the undisputed facts which young (27 y/o) Oakland film-maker Ryan Coogler has turned into a gripping character study, winning the Grand Jury and Audience Prizes at the 2013 Sundance film festival. At Cannes, it won Best First Film.

Fruitvale Station  follows the last 26 hours of Oscar’s life. Coogler starts with a number of real events in Oscar’s life, compressing them into his final day. Oscar is not a saint, but neither is he obviously on a path to oblivion. He had been arrested five times after the age of 18, serving two years in jail. But he was also by all accounts a loving son, a devoted father, and trying to build a life apart from the prison-bound choices many in his circle seemed destined for.

One scene in particular demonstrates the dichotomy in Oscar’s life, the difficulty he has in trying to find a safe path for himself. In a flashback scene, displayed while he is thinking about dumping a stash of marijuana in the Bay despite his need for the cash it could bring, he thinks about a visit his mother made to see him in prison. He has a black eye, but ignores her questions about it. He asks about his family back home, and shows concern for his future choices. But another (white) prisoner walks by, makes a vile remark about his mother, and, instantly Oscar (played by Michael B Jordan) shifts his demeanor from loving son to yard-wise convict, determined to stand his ground.

Back on New Year’s eve, 2008, Oscar bounces back and forth between his mother (who is celebrating her birthday), his job from which we was recently fired, Sophina, and Tatiana, dropping her off and picking her up from day care. He loves them both, but can’t tell his girl he has been fired – every move he makes, it seems, puts his manhood in question.

Coogler tries to show Oscar’s innate humanity in a number of ways, most of them probably grafted on to the real facts of his life. But Coogler’s real purpose here is not a definitive biography, but the humanizing, the  individualizing of an incident which, sadly, is not unique – the gunning down of a young black man (or woman) by someone who feels threatened out of proportion, scared by a stereotype, instead of responding to a person. In this case, a father, a son, a guy who’s just trying to get along in his world.