![]() ![]() Oscar has been caught cheating, and though his regret and commitment to the relationship seem sincere, Sophina is finding it difficult to trust him and move on. 31 argument between Oscar and Sophina (a fine Melonie Diaz), his girlfriend and the mother of their 4-year-old daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal). “Fruitvale Station” begins almost exactly 24 hours before it ends, with an early morning Dec. Far from making the rest of “Fruitvale” anticlimactic, knowing as a viewer what no one on-screen knows grounds this film in an unmistakable way, giving it a sense of tragic inevitability that grows as the minutes tick away. The director made the wise decision to start “Fruitvale Station” with those viral phone videos, so we can see both how abrupt and shocking his death was and be under no illusions about how this film is going to end. PHOTOS: Oscar Grant subway shooting story on film Not only does Jordan have Grant’s distinctive smile but he also, Coogler said at Sundance, can convey the particular combination of “warmth and an edge” that makes us feel we are experiencing the man as he must have been. Coogler wrote the role of Grant, Osc to his friends, with the actor in mind. In this, Jordan - memorable as the conflicted young drug dealer Wallace in “The Wire” - is essential. What makes “Fruitvale” so effective is its determination to do justice to all aspects of Grant’s character, to resist the temptation to view him as anything other than the full, flawed human being we see on-screen. A natural storyteller, he has the ability to let narrative simply unfold, to bring us in on the inside of a life even while working under the constraints of a tight budget and a 20-day shooting schedule. This is rich, nuanced, generous and clear-eyed film-making – amazingly so for a 28-year-old – as immediate and visceral as Greengrass and as rueful and naturalistic as Loach, with not a cliche or an unearned emotion to be seen.It’s Coogler’s empathetic talent to be alive to what is happening on-screen, to know how much weight to place on any given moment, and best of all, to understand that the difference between giving things their due (rather than overdoing it) is the key to dramatic impact. No one can make a dead man walk again, but you can remind people that he was, in fact, a man in three dimensions, a giver and taker of love, with a wayward past and the possibility of a better future, until… By making Oscar Grant once more a real figure, equipped with problems and demons and flaws, and facing a daily diet of reversals small and large, but blessed with charisma and a rock-solid decency, Coogler and the phenomenal Michael B Jordan do something similar for all the young black men dead at the hands of post-9/11 police departments or racist gun-nuts. In the viral footage he is just another young black man shot by the cops, symptom of a national pandemic of police excess, and Coogler thinks that is not enough for us to know. The movie takes those bald outlines, and that fuzzy figure on the station platform, and returns Grant's humanity to him, his flesh-and-blood personhood, his milieu, the web of warm and loving relationships sundered when he died. Reading this on mobile? Click here to view If he didn't know Oscar Grant himself, he evidently knew and understood a good many young black men like him: in and out of jail on beefs that would have earned white kids a warning or a clip round the ear a little hot-tempered and economically unreliable sometimes, but a good father as well, albeit one struggling with the stigma of jail-time and parole. Coogler is the son of an Oakland parole officer and has himself worked with young prisoners. But it's what comes in between that makes this such a wise and self-assured first feature. Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station opens with mobile phone footage of that killing, and closes with an agonising re-enactment of it. My train soon arrived and, unlike the other one, which had no air-conditioning for those heading to the poorer, blacker, blue-collar towns south of Oakland on this brutally humid day, this one offered exquisite coolness to those bound for whiter and wealthier areas. A spooky moment on a completely empty platform. Waiting for the right train at Fruitvale, I realised with an involuntary flinch that I was standing across the platform from where Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old father heading home for Hayward on New Year's Day of 2009, had been fatally shot in the back by a transit cop while handcuffed face-down on the platform – all of it captured on multiple cameraphones. I was trying to get to Berkeley, but I'd boarded the wrong train, filthy hot and heading south to the cities on the East Bay, including Hayward. I found myself on Oakland's Fruitvale station last May, as the ad campaign for the movie was gearing up. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |