Fruitvale Station

I haven't cried while watching a film in a very, very long time. Fruitvale Station had me tearing up more than once. Even though you obviously already know how it ends, the film humanizes Oscar Grant by showing all his faults as well as all his strengths. Sure, he was in prison, sure he may have cheated on his girlfriend and mother of his daughter, but no one is perfect and people can and do change all the time. Moreover, this film came out at the perfect time, right after the George Zimmerman trial, where another African American person was unnecessarily and senselessly murdered for no reason. The film does a great job showing the worlds Oscar Grant lived in, too, and the role of race and class in determining who and where one resides in for the most part. We see Grant playing with his daughter, struggling to get his job at a grocery store back, and getting rid of marijuana he could have sold. Since I am around the age of Grant when he was shot, the film also spoke to me in that obvious way, since none of us are free from police oppression and we're all potential targets.

Michael B. Jordan, who I first saw as Wallace in the first season of The Wire, plays Oscar Grant perfectly, with appropriate slang, style, and depth for a complex individual. The film's overall atmosphere of understatement, relaxed, simple shots, and the intimacy seen between Oscar and his loved ones are undeniably impressive. This film must be perhaps the best so far of the decade on race relations, a portrait of a man's life in one day (and how everything good and bad in one's life can go down) and the vagaries of the police state. I only hope that Oscar Grant's daughter will benefit from this film not only through additional exposure of the ugly capacity of humanity to take another's life, but also monetarily. And all this occurred in the same area where the Black Panthers emerged, based on the very same issue of police brutality and harassment! Huey P. Newton must be rolling in his grave...