It is sad to report that “Fruitvale Station” (2013) – the masterful directing debut by Ryan Coogler – is still prescient and urgent given Monday’s death of George Floyd – who died after pleading that he couldn’t breathe while a police officer held him down with a knee on his neck.
“Fruitvale Station” documents the last 24 hours of Oscar Grant – who was shot in the back by BART Police on New Year’s Day in 2009 in the Bay Area.
This film is essential viewing. By showing us Grant’s last day – the seemingly ordinary moments compile into creating a full portrait of a person instead of allowing him to simply become another headline. It also articulates how senseless the loss of a life is.
How do you measure a life?
Coogler starts the film with actual footage of Oscar’s shooting – and then he dramatizes the hours preceding it. The result is that the fleeting – mundane moments we witness – acquire an almost elegiac quality. The filmmaking uses a very realistic and understated approach. There are affecting and lyrical touches. Oscar sees a stray dog being hit by a driver who refuses to stop. Later in the film, his young daughter – Tatiana – watches menacing fireworks through her backseat. “You’re safe,” Oscar comforts her. “What about you?” she asks.
There’s complexity to this portrayal of Oscar – he’s not perfect. We’re told in the first scene he’s cheated on the mother of his child. We find out he’s been out of job for two weeks for he’s constantly late for work. Coogler interrupts the chronological narrative and jumps to New Year’s Eve two years earlier with a scene of Oscar in jail being visited by his mother. He sees the upcoming New Year as a an opportunity to do better – for his mom – his girlfriend and daughter.
“Fruitvale Station” won both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Coogler has gone on to extraordinary success – both commercial and artistical – helming the Oscar nominated “Creed” as well as the game changing action hero epic “Black Panther.” “Fruitvale Station” made a star out of Michael B. Jordan – and his power and magnetism are undeniable. He makes us feel, understand and care for Oscar. Together, Coogler and Jordan have forged one of the most productive and exciting director/performer collaborations in cinema. Octavia Spencer is also memorable as his mother.
The impact of the last twenty minutes is devastating and moving – and we’re left with the deep knowledge that this was the unnecessary interruption of young man’s life.
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on Tubi and to rent on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime and Vudu.
Written by Ryan Coogler
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ahna O’Reilly, and Octavia Spencer
85 minutes
About Writer and Director Ryan Coogler
“Coogler was born in Oakland. His mother, a community organizer, and his father, a juvenile-probation counselor, moved the family to Richmond, Calif., when he was 8. They sent him and his siblings to Catholic school, where Coogler played football and was good enough to get a college scholarship. There, a professor in a creative writing class suggested screenwriting. Coogler went on to film school at the University of Southern California.
After graduating, he began developing what would become his first feature film, Fruitvale Station, the true story of Oakland native Oscar Grant, an unarmed man who was shot in the back by a police officer. To make ends meet, Coogler took a job as a counselor alongside his father at the Juvenile Detention Center in San Francisco. He has said his time there helped him better understand Grant, whose life was intertwined with the criminal-justice system. The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance in 2013. “Fruitvale was about the community that I grew up in, and I wanted nothing more than for people in communities like that to see it,” Coogler says. “But when you make an indie film, the theaters that play it tend to be very specific. Those types of films didn’t play at the multiplexes in my neighborhood.” His next movie got a lot closer. He had grown up watching the Rocky movies with his dad, and wanted to explore the racial dynamic in those films. In 2015, his spin-off, Creed, which starred Fruitvale leading man Michael B. Jordan, grossed nearly $174 million at the global box office. Soon after, Disney began courting him to direct Black Panther, which would be Marvel’s first superhero film with a protagonist who wasn’t white. Coogler told the studio what was important to him: he had been thinking a lot about identity as it related to being of African descent, and the differences between cultures in the diaspora. He knew he needed to go to Africa, a place he had never been. “For me to do this film,” Coogler says, “I wanted to spend time there.”
Disney said yes. “It was clear 10 minutes into the meeting that he was interviewing us, not the other way around,” says Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios. “This movie started in the soul of this young filmmaker, and people can feel that when they watch it.” Coogler was just 29—the youngest director in Marvel’s history.” (TIME)
Coogler on Bringing Fruitvale Station to the Screen
“I was originally inspired to make this film by the event itself, as well as the aftermath. I was in the Bay Area, on Christmas break from film school when it happened. When I saw the footage on the news and online I was immediately emotionally moved and shocked. I realized that Oscar could have been me. We were the same age, his friends looked like my friends and we wore the same type of clothes. During the trial I saw how the situation became politicized. Oscar was either seen as a saint, or he was seen as a monster, who got what he deserved that night depending on which side of the fence people stood on. I felt that in that process, Oscar’s truth was lost. He was only 22 and had faults like all of us, but did not deserve what happened. I thought Oscar’s story had cinematic value and it move me and my community. Oscar’s story needed to be told.” (Washington Post)
Producing Fruitvale Station
“When I was in my last semester of film school, I received word that Forest Whitaker’s production company, Significant Productions, had been searching for young filmmakers to mentor and develop, and that my name had come up in their search for filmmakers. I had the pleasure of meeting with Nina Yang, the head of production. After our interactions and discussions, she decided that I should meet with Forest. I met Forest a few weeks later and was really encouraged by his humility and his passion for filmmaking and social issues. He was interested in hearing what type of projects I wanted to work on once I got out of school. We discussed a few ideas that I had been developing. Finally, I told him about “Fruitvale Station” and explained how and why this project was important to me and close to my heart. He agreed this story was important to tell and signed on to the project.” (Washington Post)