Fruitvale Station

I was curious about "Fruitvale Station", seeing how it was directed by Ryan Coogler, a fellow from Sacramento, and about a near-local event, the killing of Oscar Grant by a BART cop on New Year's Day, 2009. Plus, I love trains, in general, and BART in particular. I noticed there was a late show, at 10:30 p.m., so went to see that.

What a powerful movie!:

This is the true story of Oscar, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who wakes up on the morning of December 31, 2008 and feels something in the air. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions: being a better son to his mother, whose birthday falls on New Year's Eve, being a better partner to his girlfriend, who he hasn't been completely honest with as of late, and being a better father to T, their beautiful 4 year old daughter. He starts out well, but as the day goes on, he realizes that change is not going to come easy. He crosses paths with friends, family, and strangers, each exchange showing us that there is much more to Oscar than meets the eye.

I was surprised at the comparative size of the audience: about forty mostly-black folks to see an independent film that has already been out for nearly a month-and-a-half. The audience was quiet - hushed, in a rather-radical departure from the usual sort of Saturday night crowd.

When the action got frantic, with the shooting, and fear and anger vied for attention, you could tell the crowd was getting very emotional. A woman behind me was trying to make sense of the shooting, and she said out loud: "Just cuz. Just cuz."

It's disturbing when someone loses their life "just cuz".

Forrest Whittaker and Octavia Spencer are to be commended for taking a risk producing this movie. The filmmakers apparently had very little time available to film the BART station scenes, so the choreographic-like preparation for the sequence of events must have been intense. The movie won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

In portraying Grant, the movie got a little too-sentimental for my taste at times. I think part of the difficulty was fleshing out Grant's character from fragmentary events that occurred in the last 24 hours of his life. Maybe not enough information there.

A review on Film.com:

The performances are spare and unforgiving; Michael B. Jordan has flourished from a fantastic child actor in TV’s “The Wire,” to a talented adult in his own right with stints on TV shows “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood,” and in last year’s surprise sci-fi hit “Chronicle.” A nuanced and complicated role like this places Jordan in a different range than he was before, and shows off his acting chops as a leading man. Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer hasn’t let up either. Her portrayal of Oscar’s long-suffering and unconditionally loving mother is warm, funny and moving. Melonie Diaz, as Oscar’s longtime girlfriend, is a perfect counterpoint to Oscar’s attempts to be the fun dad and earn their daughter’s trust and love again.

...The shooting we saw play out in real time at the beginning of the film looms over every moment, even as we forget or deny it. It’s truly remarkable how much prejudice can slip into our assessment of facts, how much bias can control our thoughts and distract us from discovering the truth of a matter.

...Heartbreaking, compelling and entirely devastating, “Fruitvale Station” puts a face to a senseless event, a crime that cut short a life that was filled with promise, and it does so remarkably well. The film is filled with the stuff of life — humor, joy and plenty of it at times, the closeness of family, but also the financial pressures of the working poor in America and the despair that comes when a young person is killed. “Fruitvale” is outstanding, a telling portrait and testament to the life of one man and the complicated relationships to race and class that still exist within America today.