Apart from a few heavy-handed missteps (such as a scene in which his mother recommends he take the train that night instead of driving), which serve to undermine rather than underscore the drama, Coogler constructs a narrative that is utterly crushing.
Coogler’s project, from that point on, is to force you to shed those assumptions, to consider the real person behind the event to reckon with the consequences and feel what he and his family felt. Either way, one’s assumptions and prior knowledge likely affect one’s interpretation of the event. Maybe you’ve seen the footage already or heard about the incident perhaps you know nothing about it. We’re presented first with the real-life footage of Oscar’s killing. It’s a skillful directorial move, and one of the film’s finer moments.Įssentially, the entire film is a process of defamiliarization. Coogler defamiliarizes this simple and familiar act, infusing it with new meaning, bringing the audience closer to the characters. Later, Oscar picks up a card featuring the whitest white people in the world, and when he shows it to his uncles at the party, their laughter takes on a deeper significance than it would have otherwise had. “I want a black card.” As a white guy, I don’t think about the race of the people on birthday cards, and that Oscar and his sister have this conversation gives me insight into their lives that I wouldn’t otherwise have. “Don’t get me no fake-ass card with no white people on it,” she says. Early in the film, Oscar’s sister calls him to say that she can’t make it to their mother’s birthday party that night, but asks Oscar to buy a card on her behalf. Coogler also gives us a sensitive and textured picture of black culture, something that is largely absent from mainstream American cinema. He has an eye for the harshness of the urban environment but also recognizes its beauty, as when it’s touched by a sunset. He’s a loving father to his daughter, a loving son to his mother (whose birthday, in real life and in the film, is this very day, New Year’s Eve), and a gregarious presence wherever he goes, able to charm stray pit bulls and white girls at grocery stores alike.Ĭoogler is, essentially, a realist, and his long takes and hand-held shots of Oakland are stark and stunning.
He commits himself to Sophina and vows to stop selling drugs, going as far as to dump a bag of weed into the bay instead of selling it to a dealer. But it’s a new year, and Oscar wants a fresh start.
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He also recently got out of prison - the movie doesn’t tell us for what charge - and more recently lost his job at a grocery store for constant lateness. In the first scene, we learn that he recently cheated on Sophina and has been selling weed to get by. Oscar has a girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), and a four-year-old daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal). Jordan) on the night before his killing and follows him for what we know will be the last hours of his life. The film picks up with Oscar Grant (Michael B.
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This is an ambitious project to tackle, given the racial implications of the event (especially in the wake of George Zimmerman’s trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin), but it’s clear that Coogler is trying to tell us something about what Oscar Grant’s killing means. Do you know what I mean? That's where we die.”įruitvale is Coogler’s first feature, and the director is emerging as a filmmaker with strong social inclinations. Whenever you see us in the news, it's for getting shot and killed or shooting and killing somebody - for being a stereotype… So, there's a commonality with us and pit bulls - often we die in the street. and in many ways, pit bulls are like young African-American males. “You never hear about a pit bull doing anything good in the media. In an interview with The Huffington Post, director Ryan Coogler talked about the scene. The whole thing feels a little forced - you sense a directorial hand above the action, guiding the pieces around with some meaningful intent. Oscar picks up the bloody, dying dog and holds him in his arms for a few moments, then sets him down in the parking lot and drives away. Seconds later, the dog is run over by a car, which speeds away as Oscar yells after it. There’s a scene near the beginning of the film in which Oscar befriends a stray pit bull while filling up his car at a gas station.
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