"Fruitvale Station" is a docudrama based on the true story of Oscar Grant(Michael B. Brown) who was fatally shot by a BART officer after an altercation on the train, on New Years Day 2009. The film opens with some of the camera phone witness footage of his final moments that was splashed across the news/internet at the time.....then moves into a dramatization of the last 24 hours of Oscar's life,to show us the person behind the headline.
Events unfold in a loose chronological order (aside from one brief flashback detailing Oscar's previous legal troubles/incarceration) and characters are introduced purely through his interactions with them, from waking up next to his on again, off again girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz)to attempting to regain his former job while shopping for his mother's (Octavia Spencer)birthday party, to his conflict about returning to paying the bills by being a minor grade weed dealer to continue to support his young daughter's(Ariana Neal) private school tuition, and his implied hope it provides her a more stable life.
It's a subtle, nuanced means of storytelling, and Michael B. Jordan deserves all of the praise that has been heaped upon him, as his acting is just as nuanced, and he steals the scene right out from under the other actors at almost every turn. The subtle physical comedy in his interactions with his daughter Tatianna, the effortless switch to a white hot anger during a visitor's room jailhouse altercation, the practiced nonchalance mixed with regret at lying to his friends and family about having lost his "regular" job or the wounded bird tenderness that comes after one of his arguments with Sophina.
What keeps this from being a great film (rather than just a very good one) is mostly the inexperience of director Ryan Coogler. The scenes where he deviates from his initially excellent instinct to let the audience drawn their own conclusions from what we've been shown of their interactions are jarring in their near embarrassing ham handedness.
Through the first half of the film, we've gotten an excellent glimpse of both sides of Oscar's struggle, and the complexity of his better instincts versus his survival needs, and that one does not negate the other.
We didn't need the melodramatic redemption story tropes of Oscar attempting to save a dead dog, or melodramatically dumping a large baggie of weed into the sea in a fit of frustration to have empathy for him (Though if "Crash" is any indication, Oscar voters just love beat the audience with a brickbat style storytelling when a film deals with complex intersections of class and race, so he might be wiser than his years suggest).
Coogler also has not yet developed the knack for coaxing the best performances out of his actors. Melonie Diaz's Sophina alternates between the extremes of strident overbaked histrionics and depressingly flat line delivery the whole way through. Tatianna isn't given much to do aside from being appealingly wide eyed, even the usually spot on Octavia Spencer gets a bit scenery chomping cartoonish at times.
Michael Jordan's portrayal of Oscar carries this film home in spite of its flaws in a an amazing breakthrough performance....and the tension as the film reaches nearer to that ill fated train ride and equally wrenching doomed hospital room wait is what gives this film its emotional impact, and illuminates the full scope of Oscar's life and untimely death better than any combination of narrative framing ever could.
All flaws aside,an overall excellent indie film, that rightly deserves a wider release for both treating its audience with the assumed intelligence necessary to place that much faith in the ethos of "show, don't tell" with such heavy subject matter, and an amazing display of talent from its leading man.
Events unfold in a loose chronological order (aside from one brief flashback detailing Oscar's previous legal troubles/incarceration) and characters are introduced purely through his interactions with them, from waking up next to his on again, off again girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz)to attempting to regain his former job while shopping for his mother's (Octavia Spencer)birthday party, to his conflict about returning to paying the bills by being a minor grade weed dealer to continue to support his young daughter's(Ariana Neal) private school tuition, and his implied hope it provides her a more stable life.
It's a subtle, nuanced means of storytelling, and Michael B. Jordan deserves all of the praise that has been heaped upon him, as his acting is just as nuanced, and he steals the scene right out from under the other actors at almost every turn. The subtle physical comedy in his interactions with his daughter Tatianna, the effortless switch to a white hot anger during a visitor's room jailhouse altercation, the practiced nonchalance mixed with regret at lying to his friends and family about having lost his "regular" job or the wounded bird tenderness that comes after one of his arguments with Sophina.
What keeps this from being a great film (rather than just a very good one) is mostly the inexperience of director Ryan Coogler. The scenes where he deviates from his initially excellent instinct to let the audience drawn their own conclusions from what we've been shown of their interactions are jarring in their near embarrassing ham handedness.
Through the first half of the film, we've gotten an excellent glimpse of both sides of Oscar's struggle, and the complexity of his better instincts versus his survival needs, and that one does not negate the other.
We didn't need the melodramatic redemption story tropes of Oscar attempting to save a dead dog, or melodramatically dumping a large baggie of weed into the sea in a fit of frustration to have empathy for him (Though if "Crash" is any indication, Oscar voters just love beat the audience with a brickbat style storytelling when a film deals with complex intersections of class and race, so he might be wiser than his years suggest).
Coogler also has not yet developed the knack for coaxing the best performances out of his actors. Melonie Diaz's Sophina alternates between the extremes of strident overbaked histrionics and depressingly flat line delivery the whole way through. Tatianna isn't given much to do aside from being appealingly wide eyed, even the usually spot on Octavia Spencer gets a bit scenery chomping cartoonish at times.
Michael Jordan's portrayal of Oscar carries this film home in spite of its flaws in a an amazing breakthrough performance....and the tension as the film reaches nearer to that ill fated train ride and equally wrenching doomed hospital room wait is what gives this film its emotional impact, and illuminates the full scope of Oscar's life and untimely death better than any combination of narrative framing ever could.
All flaws aside,an overall excellent indie film, that rightly deserves a wider release for both treating its audience with the assumed intelligence necessary to place that much faith in the ethos of "show, don't tell" with such heavy subject matter, and an amazing display of talent from its leading man.