Written by Lincoln Athas
“I hear guns in the street,” a daughter worries.
“Those are just fireworks.” It’s a role the father often fills – reassuring the child, often without evidence, that everything’s going to be just fine.
Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station was winner of both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The Grand Jury honored the film, they say, “for its skillful realization, its devastating emotional impact and its moral and social urgency.” A lot of good films have the first two; it’s that third point, I believe, that makes this film special. It wasn’t coincidence, after all, that its release perfectly aligned with the ruling on George Zimmerman. More on this later.
The film opens with Oscar and girlfriend Sophina (Michael B. Jordan and Melonie Diaz) in the midst of a minor quarrel. A voice is heard – “daddy” – from just outside, and Oscar gestures to Sophina to do her thing. “She called you,” Sophina replies. So Oscar goes to it. Daughter Tatiana does seem to call on Oscar more. In this scene, she can’t sleep, and the only remedy is to be by daddy’s side.
As we live a day in the life of Oscar, and watch him struggle to keep a job and stay straight, it’s very clear what drives him – providing a good life for his daughter. But I couldn’t help but wonder at times how effective of a father he really is. Preparing for school in the morning, Tatiana asks mom if she can take 2 gummy packs for lunch. Sophina replies, “you can take an apple,” and Tatiana is disappointed. When she’s dropped off at school, we discover that Oscar took the 2 gummy packs, and he gives them to his daughter when mom’s not looking. Tatiana gives him an immediate kiss on the cheek, and runs into school happy.
Is it just me, or is his action completely undermining the order and discipline mom is trying to instill? Not only will Tatiana fail to learn her mother’s lesson in nutrition, but she will also look at mom less favorably. This action isn’t that severe, but it speaks volumes of Oscar’s general character: not respectful of authority, late to work, and serving less as a strong father figure than as a fun uncle to his daughter, racing her to the car after work, and diving into a body pile with her and her cousins every chance he gets.
So yes, he is a flawed character, but with a soft and gentle side we have a few chances to witness. It’s New Years Eve, and before the inevitable fireworks there will be family get-togethers and the stress of cooking. Oscar visits the supermarket where he works (or worked) and finds a young woman clueless about how to make a “fish fry” for her boyfriend and company. We know Oscar’s messed around before, so we catch ourselves in judgment as he confronts this woman. It turns out his intentions are genuine; he’s calling grandma – who’s in the middle of preparing the gumbo for tonight’s meal – so that she can enlighten this naïve young cook.
The young woman is grateful and very warm with Oscar, reflecting the warmth in him. But that warmth is gone in an instant, as Oscar turns on his (former) boss, begging for his job back, even threatening him. There is a deep rage in Oscar, and in this moment we have to suffer through it. It’s a bit child-like – not being able to keep the emotions at bay – and it’s what has dragged him down all along. It’s why he’s struggled to be a proper father for his daughter – not just emotionally, but physically. In a central scene of the film, Oscar is separated from his daughter, and his mother tells him she doesn’t care what he does for Sophina; it’s for Tatiana that he must succeed. In this scene, that rage returns again. The mother is wise enough to know, when she sees it, that it’s Oscar’s downfall. To make a point, she walks out on him right there and then. In this world, she’s probably seen too many succumb to the rage and lose everything for it. Walking out is the most effective way she can make her point.
What happens in the final scenes of the film reveals how necessary that point was. The story of Fruitvale Station, at bottom, is of a man trying desperately to overcome his past, to move beyond the rage and become a grounded and stable father figure. Whether he succeeds at this, you’ll have to judge for yourself; revealing my opinion would mean revealing spoilers. But I will say a little about the two main events that build to the film’s climax. One of them is a decision Oscar makes, which everything up until this point, not least of which is the love of his daughter, has led him to make. The other event is much less in his control. And this is where the “moral and social urgency” I mentioned before comes to play.
It took me a long time to figure out why this film was so affective. I saw it on a Thursday afternoon, with a light crowd of twenty or so, but that was enough to produce cries heard and felt all through the theater. I attended with a young friend, a teenager, who said it was the first movie that touched his heart. For a while, I reasoned that it was affective just like any other story can be affective – we meet someone we can sympathize with, and believe in, and then are shattered when tragedy hits, and struck by deep injustice. But that’s not really the full story, and the makers of this film know it.
Yes, there is injustice here, and that is why the film has gotten so much attention. But that injustice extends beyond the final act of the film; that injustice is, at bottom, the reason why Oscar has the past that he does. It is what his mother implores him to escape, and which, for the love of his daughter, he almost does. A violent setting – of dogs left for dead on the side of the road, of “guns in street” – sets the tone for this hard, often insurmountable life. This is what makes the film so affective: tone and feeling, rather than over-the-top instances of racism and judgment. Racism today, the filmmakers know, acts much more subtly. (That’s the difference between this film and, for example, 2005’s Crash).
That Oscar is faced with rage, and led into the events of the final act, is therefore more deeply understood. The enemy he faces at the Fruitvale train station isn’t the thug he meets from prison or any of the cops that have him on the ground. The enemy is bigger, but also hazier and less concrete, lurking in the background of this story all along. The entire film, then – not just the final incident – drives our despair and heartache. The two images of Tatiana that we are left with are certainly the most crushing I have seen in any film this year.
This is not a light film. But it is a very important one. Unlike many films that attempt to deal with racism, it honestly brings us into this man’s life and struggle, which makes the climax that much more astounding and shocking. It meets the highest aspiration a film can have: to bring us into another life, and leave us with a richer understanding of the world that affects that life. Its “social urgency” comes from its incredible, and painful, honesty.
The film is based on the true story of an incident in the Bay Area on New Year’s Day, 2009. Because the film is so well done, and because we should remember not just this incident but so many others like it, I urge you to see this film. If you are afraid that you will embarrass yourself with tears, trust me, you won’t be alone.