"I told him to take the train
I told him to take the BART
I didn't know they were going to take him."
- Wanda (Oscar Grant's Mother)
I couldn't do a true review of this movie because I was entirely too emotional while watching it. Despite knowing what would happen in the film, I had a very visceral reaction to the shooting scene. My breathing became shallow, I felt like someone had punched me in the chest, and tears streamed down my face for the last half hour. I still feel bad for the older white couple sitting in the row behind me who thought they were going to have the theatre to themselves and instead had a crying media critic for last 30 minutes of the movie. This was too much of reminder of my fears for black people in the United States. I kept asking myself if I would be in Wanda's place one day like so many other black mothers. How would/could I handle that?
I did manage to pull myself out of a worried haze for most of the film thankfully. The first thing I noticed about the movie was that the director and editor(s) wanted there to be noise. This gave the film an almost home video feel. We were getting a "first hand" view of the last day of Oscar's life. Granted, it's not like the film had a handheld camera feel a la The Blair Witch Project (1999), but there was definitely a purposeful graininess to the movie that I liked. We see Oscar (Michael B. Jordan), a man who is out of work, who is still helping others when he can, and who loves his family for a day. We, the audience, finally get to meet the man that we'd only know as the man killed on the BART platform by a cop. Director Ryan Coogler wanted him to become more than that and worked to make that happen. All of the actors gave spectacular performances, especially Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer, which only aided in achiever Coogler's end goal.
The other piece that stood out to me was the juxtaposition of the killing of the stray dog and Oscar's murder (I refuse to use the term involuntary manslaughter or accidental killing). We hear the dog get hit by a speeding car early in the film and see Oscar run into the street while yelling at the driver. He picks up the dog to comfort him in his last moments while calling for help. His cries fall upon deaf ears. Who cares about a stray dog? We later see Oscar lying in a small pool of his own blood after being shot with one of the cops telling Officer Ingram (Chad Michael Murray) that Oscar is no one. Who cares about a black man? At least the dog had Oscar. As he lied dying on the platform and his friends were being dragged away by the police, Oscar had no one.
Officer Ingram was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison. He served 11 months. I knew this and still left the theatre feeling extremely sad and hopeless. I called my mom to talk to her about the film. She didn't know what I was talking about (she's more of a Hallmark Channel watcher) so I explained everything that happened to Oscar Grant on the last day of 2008 including the sentence for Officer Ingram. She was confused and said, "Everyone saw him get shot... You're saying that the cop said he thought his gun was a taser? But, they look different. Don't they feel different?" I responded with, "that was his defense. Oscar is also Black and the cop was White." All of a sudden everything clicked for her. "Ohhh, now that makes sense. It's unfortunate, but now that makes sense." I think that conversation says it all. Race makes injustice make sense in the United States. It's why I'm still emotional as I type these words. It's why so many tears were shed watching this film. It's real life on that screen. It's a depiction of the past that is still very much the present. It resonates.
I thought this film was excellent, but I am admittedly biased. If you haven't gone as yet, go see Fruitvale Station. Allow Oscar Grant to be more than the man wrongfully shot on the BART platform. Allow him be the father, son, boyfriend, and friend that he also was one last time.
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