Film The idea behind this Film Club is to pick a film that I think deserves more attention, and set my deputies and another TN2er the homework of watching it. They’ll then share their viewing experiences alongside mine. Ideally, we’ll all love my exquisite taste for cinema, and you’ll have four people recommending a film to you instead of just one. Or maybe you’ll never trust one of my reviews again.
WORDS BY CONNOR HOWLETT (FILM EDITOR)
Although I’ve written very briefly about our first film, Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013), in TN2 before, I picked it for
Film Club as I believe it to be a criminally underseen masterpiece that continues to have great significance. Ryan Coogler’s feature début is a film that is sensitive, vital and ultimately devastating. As this is a film based on a true and very public tragedy, we do discuss the plot in depth. The plot takes place over the final day that Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) spent alive in Oakland, California. Oscar is an ex-con attempting to build his life back together; at various times we see him trying to raise his daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal), be an attentive boyfriend and be a good son. In spite of the temptations he faces to earn quick money by selling dope, he chooses to work towards a legitimate means of income and maintain his integrity as a reformed and better person. He chooses life with those he loves. That is, until white police officers make that choice inconsequential. In reality, it doesn’t matter that Oscar chooses to become better and actively works on making this happen, because his life is cut short by a racist system of oppression. He was my age (22) when he was killed by the police. It is a difficult film to watch. It is a film that has left me paralysed with emotion and shock every time I have watched it – and I have watched it at least 10 times. This is a film that opens with the real-life mobile phone footage of a real-life murder of an unarmed Black man by a police officer who had sworn to protect and serve the citizen he has just killed. He was my age when he was killed by the police. While Fruitvale Station feels like an effortlessly human portrayal of a man’s final hours, the film is masterfully constructed to achieve this. Notably and importantly, Oscar is not characterised as flawless, but human. Oscar and his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz) are introduced discussing his infidelity after the title credits. Whilst his indiscretions may frustrate and hurt, you never dislike Oscar. This is significant, because these complications of character illustrate a portrait of complex humanity. Protagonists without flaws are not real people. They do not breathe and move and impact the way that Oscar does by showing his vulnerabilities. In spite of his missteps, he is a charming and affectionate man. He loves his daughter, and is a doting son, grandson and brother. He was my age when he was killed by the police. Rachel Morrison’s cinematography is intimate and revealing of the tough decisions Oscar has to make throughout his day, eventually replaced by lingering shots of spaces that have been left by the characters in the build-up to the tragedy. As the final incident at Fruitvale Station begins to take place, the intimacy of the framing shifts into scrutiny and claustrophobia, evoking the cruel distress and oppressive atmosphere of the scene. Several tight shots of one police officer’s knee pressing down on Oscar’s neck are chillingly evocative of the murder of George Floyd by a policeman using the same supposed ‘method of restraint’. The film closes on a shot of Tatiana, and shows that, even if it doesn’t take their individual life, racist acts of police brutality and the threat thereof cast a seemingly unrelenting oppressive shadow on Black communities. Oscar Grant was my age when he was killed by the police, and Fruitvale Station taught me about this profound tragic injustice.
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