Next Stop, Please

Remember my streak of seeing some wonderful, small budget, independent movies this summer?

Yeah, well, Joe DiMaggio eventually didn't get a hit in a game.  And I went to see "Fruitvale Station."

This film wasn't on my hit list.  This is what I call a "housekeeper movie."  One of those time wasters that I needed so I could clear out of the house while she worked.  Maria does a much better job when no one is around.  And, on this most recent day, the film that was playing at the time most adjacent to my housekeeper's arrival was....

Well, I told you already.

Okay,"Fruitvale Station" had been well reviewed, but, then again, so are most Judd Apatow movies.  I need to learn how to deal with critics who like everything as long as there's a tub of buttered popcorn on their lap. But, as I entered the theater, I had a sense that "Fruitvale Station" was going to disappoint.  And, by that criterion alone, I guess you can say the movie was successful.

Indeed, here's a movie that, at its very core, is manipulative and rather phony.  It harkens back to a cinematic time in the 60s when you had groundbreaking films like "Lilies of the Field" and "A Patch of Blue" helping to deal with the racial tensions of our land.   If "Fruitvale Station" had been made in 1965, it certainly would have starred Sidney Poitier.  But, it was made in 2013 and based on a real incident that happened in San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2008.  One could argue that, in the years since the 60s, we should be in a better place with race relations by now.  I would contend that we are.  And exploitative movies like this one only hurt the cause because they promote the tried business model that America is a racist country.

It's a true story and I don't deny that any of this happened.  The film gives us the last day of young Oscar Grant's life.  We know he'll be dead by the end of the movie because it was in all the newspapers.  Coming home from a New Year's celebration, the Black man winds up in a skirmish on the BART train and is ultimately shot to death by a sadistic White cop.  This shooting is captured on video by a bunch of cell phones and the police officer loses his job.

Of course, director Ryan Coogler, who was still in the USC Film School when this actually happened, chooses to give you the final-day-snapshot of the life that was snuffed out.  So we follow Oscar.  In loving moments with his Hispanic girlfriend.  Picking up his young daughter at school.  Helping a dog that has been hit by a car.  Bonding with his mother and doing grocery shopping for her. Even helping out a young White yuppie wife at the supermarket by sharing with her his grandmother's recipe for fried catfish.

It's so white-washed that Oscar could have been played by Ozzie Nelson.

Of course, since facts are facts, Coogler can't overlook the fact that Oscar is recently out of jail.  He clearly had anger management issues behind bars.  And still consorts with his drug dealing friends.  But, those moments clearly get in the way of the heart-tugging sympathy the director wants to evoke for the lead character.  So their placement in the story is downplayed completely.  Meanwhile, my research after seeing the film shows me that some other reviewers have conducted fact checks on the original incident. Coogler clearly revises history in order to arrive at a film that will have you reaching for that Kleenex by the end.  Hell, he's not the first director to do this and he won't be the last.  But, when you're trying to depict a real-time event honestly and accurately, you owe it to your audience to show all sides of what happened.

The murder of Oscar Grant by a policeman is a horrific moment in our time.  But it's a blemish in what has become a terrific half-century of improving race relations in this country.  We have come so far.  Is their work to do yet?  Most definitely.  But, are we still back in 1965 when people would sneer when Sidney Poitier holds the hand of a blind Elizabeth Hartman?  Absolutely not.  And, if this country is so damn bigoted, how the heck do we have a half-Black President elected not once, but twice???

Hollywood loves to play to this portion of their audience.  Delivering the message over and over and over about where we have been.  The trailers that ran prior to "Fruitvale Station" demonstrate that.  One was a movie about a slave in the 1860s.  The other was for "The Butler," which likely could be my next "housekeeper movie" only because it looks hilariously dreadful and might be a fun blog entry.  Again, we keep dealing with the past and not the present.  Jeez, even Steven Spielberg refrained from doing a sequel to "Schindler's List."

So, refusing to look forward, director Coogler gives us an angelic snapshot of Oscar Grant, who clearly had some issues.  The police in the attack are depicted as such villains that they make the Nazi storm troopers in "Diary of Anne Frank" look like Disney's Seven Dwarfs.  It's so one-sided an affair that the referee should stop the fight in round one.  Meanwhile, Coogler gets even sloppier by showing us that one of the people recording the event on their cell phone just happens to be the young wife looking to fry some catfish.  How utterly convenient and phony is that?   Maybe it really did happen.  But you know damn well that it didn't.  Another false moment in a cascading series of them in "Fruitvale Station."  You've heard of the old "meet cute" plot device in film scripts?  This is actually what I would call a "kill cute" plot device.

If director Coogler really wanted to forge some new ground, he should have devoted half the movie to following the guilty policeman during his day as well.  Let's see his life as well.  Are there kids?  A wife?  Was he in the super market, too?  And what, in his personality and make-up, brought him to that fateful meeting with Oscar Grant?  Two lives that collide in a split second.  Altering both forever.  

Now that would have been interesting.  

But, instead, as always, you can count on Hollywood to take the easy way out.  And remind us one more time that we all need to have a continual dialogue with each other on race relations in this nation.

As long as you talk like it's still 1965.

LEN'S RATING:  One star.

Dinner last night:  Leftover pizza and antipasto salad.