vancouver
East County
Beaverton
North Portland
cation
O pinionated
J udge
Michael B. Jordan stars in Fruitvale Station, a new drama film about the death of Oscar Gm nUvhowaskiiledin
2009 by transit police in Oakland, Calif.
Film
strikes a chord in African-American experience
r* . ___
by
/ a ___________
D arleen O rtega
The film, which has already won major awards at the
In the wee hours of New Years’ Day, 2009, an unarmed 22- Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals, arrives at an opportune
year-old man lying face down on a subway platform in time. Its story strikes chords that resonate with the national
Oakland, Calif, was shot in the back by a transit police officer.
debate over the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the
Oscar Grant -- "Osc" to his friends — died a few hours later,
shooting of Trayvon Martin — but not because it analyzes or
leaving behind a four-year-old daughter, a long-time girl­
makes sense of events that feel all too familiar to many o f us.
friend, and a family who loved him.
First-time writer director Ryan Coogler, an African-American
"Fruitvale Station," which opens in the Portland area on
Bay-Area native who is now about the same age Grant would
Friday, begins with grainy footage of the shooting captured
have been had he lived, does not set out to make a documen­
by one of the many passengers who witnessed it and
tary or write an op-ed.
recorded it on their cell phones.
What he does instead is, in a sense, more unusual: He
Although it’s hard to make out exactly what is happening takes much o f what is known about Grant and gives us a
(and that is a matter of volatile debate), it is clear that several
necessarily fictionalized but arguably more deeply true por­
black men are being detained by white transit officers, and
trait of his last day. In this retelling, Grant is not just a statistic.
one in particular is being treated so roughly that the others He is not a hero, or a symbol, or a thug who brought tragedy
are protesting. And then the shot.
on himself. He is a complex person with hopes and loves,
good intentions and yet real reason to doubt if he would live
into them.
He has served time for dealing drugs and has been lying
to his girlfriend Sophina and his mother about having lost his
job, yet he is devoted to his daughter and still aims to please
his mom. And there is real connectedness with Sophina that
might yet have stood the test of time.
It doesn't really matter if all these details were really true
of Oscar Grant. What Coogler succeeds in doing is to make
you see a real person who, whatever his failings, did not
deserve to die that night.
His portrait is a marvel of specificity, an insider's lived-in
look at life for many African-Americans. We see his youth­
fulness, a mixture of good-heartedness and impetuosity, his
tenderness and bravado. We also see that the world he lives
in is treacherous.
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