Fruitvale Station Analysis

Fruitvale Station is a 2013 American Social realism, Drama, biography film written and directed by Ryan Coogler. Fruitvale station is the true story of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), a 22 year old Bay Area resident. With previous convictions Grant vows to change for the new year, he plans to be a better partner to his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), a better son to his mother Wanda (Octavia Spencer) and being a better father to his 4 year old daughter T (Tatiana) played by Ariana Neal. The story follows his journey throughout the day and night of the 31^st December 2013 until his final fatal encounter with police officers at Fruitvale Bart Station would cause the entire nation to be witnesses to the story of Oscar Grant. The film had a small budget of £592,000 and made an amazing £11.4m in the box office.

This film comes under the genres of social realism, drama and biography due to different conventions used. I can tell its social realism because the film follows a man from a lower class background, you can see this is the mise-en-scene and location of the character’s environment. When it shows inside the house you can see in to most other rooms when the camera is standing in one which shows the size of the house. It’s also social realism because it’s realistic, there’re no car chases or multiple explosions instead to gives you an insight into how many people live their lives. The simple fact that it exhibits real life situations if a clear convention of a Drama film and its obvious biography comes in to the genre as soon as the film says “based on a true story.”

One major theme shown predominantly in the last few scenes is police brutality. This theme is similar to other films I have seen such as Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film La Haine and Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing. The main similarity between these films is not just police brutality but the representation of race within this brutality. The police are shown to be predominantly against different races and treat them differently than if they were Caucasian. They’re a lot more understanding towards white people and see all other races as trouble makers. In the scene set at Fruitvale Station when the police are grabbing the “troublemakers” they only took Grant and his group they didn’t take the group of white males who actually started the fight which emphasises they were treated differently because they didn’t look like everyone else. This film gave me a true and deeper insight into these events. This film used the representation of events to shows us what really happened so we wouldn’t just have to listen to the mixed and mostly biased media tell us Grant was “dangerous” like they have with the recent murders of young black Americans. The film portrayed Grant to be this loving family man who wanted to set his wrong doings right which generated more sympathy and sadness within me as I watched the brutal event unfold and happen to an innocent man.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this film it was heart breaking but incredibly intriguing. The acting was great and caused me to become more emotional. This film made me realise just how much power the police have over the citizens of their town or city and it portrays to you how much they really “care” for these citizens. Justice never seems to be fully served to the police with the officer being charged for first degree murder but being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, being sentenced for a minor 2 years yet still only serving 11 months. I felt I experienced what his family did due to the truly devastating story but also the great acting. I would highly recommend this film.