Black Live Matter Spotlight: Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station (6/12/2020)
- Heather German
- Jun 28, 2020
- 3 min read
Fruitvale Station - and Ryan Coogler's filmography as a whole - provides a very fascinating counterweight to Ava DuVernay's in a lot of ways. Both filmmakers tend to look at very similar issues of Black struggles in the contemporary Western world, but both could not be more different in how they go about doing it. While Ava DuVernay tends to take an outside in look, deconstructing the various forces at play and exposing and demythologizing the institutional structures and historical complexities that lead to what racism is in today's world, Ryan Coogler tends to take a more humanistic approach, grounding his approach in the perspective of his characters and exploring how they are affected by these issues.
Coogler's most famous and successful works are his 2015 Rocky reimagining Creed and his 2018 superhero film Black Panther. Both were released to massive critical acclaim and both contained strong elements of his identity and message as a filmmaker. But his first career highlight was in 2013's indie drama Fruitvale Station, a film that not only set the stage for his success but also for his recurring star Micheal B. Jordan in a beautiful yet staggeringly tragic story about life lost and redemption denied.
Fruitvale Station tells the story of Oscar Grant, a 22 year old man who was shot to death by police on January 1st 2009 in an Oakland subway station. The film chronicles the final day of his life, from his morning interactions with his family to the final subway ride of his life. Fruitvale Station works on a number of levels, from a drama about life and death, a tragedy about the fleeting nature of life, and a relevant social critique about a massive systemic flaw in our criminal justice system - and the common defenses of it that typically come up.
When a Black person is shot by police and their death is sensationalized, they are immediately reduced to nothing but a statistic. A criminal shot in the midst of a crime, a sketchy, untrustworthy figure that was perhaps treated unfairly by the police, but wasn't a hero that deserves to be memorialized.
There's a subtext of trying to rationalize the death, to cultivate a viewpoint where this person deserved the death they received. Fruitvale Station confronts this mindset head-on, and shows us what Oscar Grant was truly like. The final day of his life represents him in all of his flaws and strengths. He was an ex convict, a drug dealer, a man who cheated on his family and lied. But he was also a compassionate man who deeply cared about them, who wanted to do right by the world and turn himself around. He could make friends even with random strangers, and was willing to drop everything just to be with a dog that was hit by a car so that it wouldn't die alone. He was a man plagued by regrets of mistakes from his past, but hope that perhaps he could redeem himself, make up for what he had done and put it all past him, becoming the man that he wanted to be.
All of that was taken from him because of some overly-aggressive police officers who saw him as a thug first and a person last.
To dismiss Oscar Grant, and every other victim of racially motivated police brutality, as just a criminal who got what was coming, or an unfortunate victim of their own life of criminal choices, is fundamentally dehumanizing them. Even the worst of these people was a human being who deserved to be treated as such. With Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler works to try and restore the humanity not just of Oscar Grant, but of Black people all across the country, and show us the innate humanity that is in every single one of them - especially those who fall victim to the police.
It is utterly horrifying how relevant Fruitvale Station still is. It's that rare kind of film that should have aged poorly, and in doing so proven its importance to begin with. Oscar Grant should have been the last one. Michael Brown should have been the last one. George Floyd should be the last one, but none of that will happen unless we act. And if we think for a moment that any of this is okay, that even one death is acceptable, we should all remember Oscar Grant and the look of love on his face for his family, and the conviction he had to turn his life around, and remember that all of that was taken from him.
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