Fruitvale Station: The Should, the Could and the Empty

I haven't written a movie review in a few months, but sometimes, a film comes along that knocks you over and wakes you up. And without a doubt, Ryan Coogler's masterpiece Fruitvale Station is one of those films.





Let me preface this realization:





I'm looking forward to the upcoming Rocky sequel, which instead casts Sylvester Stallone in a supporting role for the main protagonist, Adonis Creed, who is Apollo Creed's son and is played by Michael B. Jordan. I've never seen anything with the young actor (having avoided Fant4stic this year), so I looked up his filmography and found a highly rated film from 2013 called, of course, Fruitvale Station. I like to see who is involved with the creation of a film, primarily the actors, directors, and screenwriters. Jordan was the lead actor for Fruitvale Station, like he is for Creed, and I noticed that the writer and director of Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler, was also the writer/director for Creed. Whenever you see directors and actors pair up constantly, that typically means that they bring out the best in each other (see Robert DeNiro/Leonardo DiCaprio with Martin Scorsese, or Michael Fassbender with Steve McQueen). A quick search showed me that the movie was (and still is) available to view on Netflix, which I happen to have, and so I added it to my list and forgot about it until recently.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was to go into this film expecting more anti-police / heavily-slanted racism messages, akin to what we've been bombarded with from the media regarding Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and of course, Oscar Grant (whom this film is about). Instead, I watched a film that focuses on who Grant was as a person. We see his days in prison, his struggle to stop dealing dope and maintain legal income, what his persona and speech was like, and most importantly, his relationships with his long-time girlfriend Sophina Mesa (portrayed well by Melonie Diaz), their daughter Tatiana, his mother Wanda Johnson, and the many people (family, friends, and even strangers) that he interacted with in his life. Coogler chose to use the film as a quasi-documentary, which creates an hyperrealistic tone that will either enthrall you or bore you, in a similar way to Boyhood. Unlike that 3-hour film, however, this one is 97 minutes long and spends only an hour of it to show Grant's life before progressing into the inevitable final act, which is both tense and emotional. While I understand that Coogler took some creative liberties with his film (adding and omitting to the overall story), I feel that he did it so as to make the story flow a bit better while also helping us to get to know this short-lived young man.

Jordan has mesmerizing hold of the camera without ever overacting or overselling his character. He simply portrays the young ex-con like a young ex-con, and has drawn many comparisons to Denzel Washington's strong-yet-silent persona. But it wasn't the stoic personality that made me look past the actor to see the man: it was Jordan's complete lack of self. He became Oscar Grant (or at least, Coogler's Oscar Grant) so that we could see that person and fully understand him. There are so very few films with this capability to engross you in the protagonist: I can think of two off the top of my head, which are The Godfather and 12 Years a Slave. That's very esteemed company indeed, and although I do not think that Fruitvale Station quite reaches their level, it doesn't miss the mark by much.

Coogler has constructed a film and semi-fictional environment that is brutal with its honesty, yet artfully recorded as if by a simple onlooker of Grant's life, which we become. The complete lack of bias immediately drew me into the story and its characters, since that is so rare to find nowadays. Almost all films now have some sort of message, whether it be simple (Captain America: The Winter Soldier with representation of NSA and surveillance) or much more powerful (12 Years a Slave with the cruelly accurate portrayal of slavery as it was). But Coogler follows in the footsteps of directors such as Kathryn Bigelow or David Fincher where they simply tell the story how it happened, more or less, and leave all judgment and subjectivity to the viewer. Obviously, being both the writer and director, Coogler can only be so objective while being human, and so he definitely portrays the events in such a way that we are sympathetic towards Grant, but I'd argue that simply happens when you get to be in a person's footsteps for an extended period of time, such as with Walter White in Breaking Bad, who you root for despite his monstrosities.

Oscar Grant was not a perfect person. Fruitvale Station is not a perfect film. But I'll be damned if it isn't one of the best I've seen in a long time, and fully capable of drawing emotions out of me that I have reached with a select few films, most recently being the aforementioned 12 Years a Slave.


So, it's really quite easy for me to say that you SHOULD see this film as soon as you can, which could even be tonight if you have a Netflix subscription. I can guarantee that you will enjoy it, and will introduce you to the combined power of Michael B. Jordan and writer/director Ryan Coogler.


P.S. - Now I want to try to find Rocky somewhere to fully prep me for Creed. Planning to see that on either Tuesday or Wednesday!