Movie Review: "Fruitvale Station"

"Fruitvale Station": A-.  Fruitvale Station could have been titled, A Day In The Life Of Oscar Grant. That day was New Year's Eve, 2008.  The movie employs two film making devices which, because they are used effectively, add extra dimensions to the story.  The first relates to the chronological unfolding of the movie's events.  The movie opens with actual footage, captured as videos on the cell phones of several witnesses, of a crime being committed around 2:00 in the morning on the platform of a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station in Oakland, California.  Once we have watched the commission of the crime, the movie "flashbacks" to the events of the previous day, culminating with the platform scene.  I would not call this non-linear strategy rare, but is incorporated only occasionally in the film industry.  Citizen Kane, Doctor Zhivago, The English Patient, 500 Days Of Summer and Lawrence Of Arabia are examples of successful films where we begin at or near the end.

Following the crime, we are retrospectively introduced to Oscar (Michael B. Jordan), a twenty-two year old living in Hayward, a multi-ethnic, blue collar East Bay city.  Although Oscar has "done time" in San Quentin and has recently been fired from his grocery store job due to tardiness, he and his girl friend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), are trying to be good parents for their darling pre-school daughter, Tatiana.  Oscar and Sophina may not be married, but there's no denying that, with little Tatiana, they're a family.

We see both the good and bad sides of Oscar.  He maintains respectful (albeit repaired) relationships with his mother, Wanda (the fabulous Octavia Spencer), and grandmother, his friends are a decent bunch of guys, and by most outward appearances he's is a mellow cat who likes to listen to funky music.  On the other hand, Oscar has a temper which occasionally surfaces, such as when he asks his boss to reinstate him at the grocery store.  There is also an effective scene going two years back, in which Wanda visits him at San Quentin.  There, the conversation between mother and son does not go well. When Oscar tells Wanda that she never "had his back," implying that it's her fault that he's in prison, tears well up in her eyes.  We are witnessing a tremendous acting performance by Spencer, who won an Academy Award for the 2011 film, The Help.  As she is sitting across a table from him, another inmate enters the room and profane words are exchanged between the two men.  The prison guards have to step in.  Oscar has to be restrained as Wanda gets up to exit.

The second film making device, which I also consider risky but which works well here, is that the director intentionally includes several scenes which do not really advance the story, i.e., they have little, if anything, to do with getting the central characters to that BART platform near the end of the movie.  For example, consider these four scenes from Fruitvale, each lasting over three minutes: Oscar helps a grocery shopper select fish to use for a dinner party; Oscar meets an acquaintance near San Francisco Bay to sell him some marijuana; Oscar pets and cares for a stray dog; and, Oscar offers a store owner ten dollars to reopen his shop so that his girlfriend can use the bathroom after hours.  Only one of those four scenes directly relates to the film's climax.  Why include scenes which fail to advance the story?  Usually, they would end up on the proverbial cutting room floor.  It is what I would suggest calling the "comprehensive" strategy.  I am guessing here, but I believe it coincides with the director's goal of showing how the roughly twenty-four hours preceding the sudden events on the platform were not extraordinary at all.  Almost all of Oscar's activities from the preceding day are filmed, not just those of apparent import.  Nothing we see occurring the day before the early morning crime would lead us to suspect that something bad was about to happen. 

Fruitvale Station was written and directed by Ryan Coogler, making his first full length feature.  The movie won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and the Best First Film Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival.  The film makers of the other entrants must certainly have realized they were up against some tough competition.