Fruitvale Station: More than a Movie

      

               This past weekend I went to see the movie that BET was playing the trailer for every 3 minutes.  While I wasn’t sure what exactly the movie was about or had knowledge of the true story  of Oscar Grant III that director and writer Ryan Coogler had based the movie on, the fast paced, dramatic trailer along with the buzz it was generating interested me. The buzz it was generating was more than generic compliments about how good the movie was. Actually when you asked people about the movie, instead of talking about details about the action people would just reply, “You have to see it”.

                So mentally and emotionally unprepared my sister and I sat through the emotional roller coaster that was Fruitvale Station. The movie starring HBO OZ star, Michael B Jordan, starts off as a day in the life story of Oscar Grant III a young black man living in the Bay Area. With little musical score and simplistic camera techniques the movie takes you through the struggles of a young uneducated black man in America trying to support his girlfriend and young daughter.  Now I personally try to keep from pulling the race card and putting the “Blacks Only” label on things, but I really found it hard to imagine any middle class white person fully relating to this movie.  And if watching a young Oscar Grant deal with the struggles I’ve watched some of my friends and relatives go through wasn’t emotionally triggering enough, the loving innocence that Michael B Jordan so excellently portrays just sets the audience up to break down at the end. Despite the literal emotion the ending provokes, the detail that triggers the tears is that you remember that it’s based on a true story. Although the movie tells the story of Oscar Grant III specifically, the movie tells the story of entirely too many black men in this country as well.  As the audience (all African American) cleared the theater in complete silence and dried tears, I felt the thought that must have been sinking in with the rest of the audience. “This is real.”

                As I drove home alone, the tears fell again. They were same tears that I shed for Trayvon Martin’s parents after the verdict. It was the same hopeless feeling I felt when I  couldn’t dry my friends tears after hearing their friend was left for dead in his car after being shot in my hometown. The same chill I get when I hear the story of Emmitt Till and Rodney King. It was the same anger I feel when I come home from my predominantly white university and see people my age and my skin color, blowing all their God given talents and potential out of their nose with Kush smoke.  It was the same fear I feel at the thought of potentially giving birth to a black man.  Fresh from the wounds of the Trayvon Martin verdict, Fruitvale Station brought the injustice that African Americans suffer in America to the spot light and provoked  the suppressed emotion that we are forced to walk around with every day. Action, laughter, a steamy sex scene; yes this movie has all of the textbook qualities that are needed for a movie to be considered good, But the sad thing is this movie will probably never get the public recognition it deserves. And not just a trophy from the academy (predominately white) but after the 30 second trailer falls out of BET’s rotation  (the only network I’ve seen the movie promoted), and it comes out on Red Box, people’s tears will dry and the real life injustice with continue unless something is done. So if you ask me. Yes, it’s a good movie but not because of what you see while you’re watching it; it’s what you feel after you leave the theater that makes the movie great.