'Fruitvale Station' Is Loose With The Facts In An Effort To Elicit Sympathy For Oscar Grant Jul 25th 2013, 09:08
Harvey Weinstein's big Oscar hopeful this summer is "Fruitvale Station," a true story about the fatal Oakland shooting of an unarmed young black man that arrived with almost miraculous timing. Hitting theaters just as the jurors in the George Zimmerman trial were deliberating. the film won the two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and has become a cause celebre among critics. Activists are seizing the opportunity to promote the movie, which calls for justice and implies that nothing like it has occurred yet, though the man who shot and killed Oscar Grant has already served time in prison and Grant's family has prevailed in a large civil suit.
Hoping to stir the public, though, the film dances around the facts. Its first problem is how to handle its 22-year-old subject (played by Michael B. Jordan), who was a small-time criminal who cheated on his girlfriend and had been fired from a job at a grocery store. All of these flaws are depicted in the film, but nevertheless "Fruitvale Station," a debut effort from young filmmaker Ryan Coogler, tries to fit a halo on its subject, seemingly to play up the audience's sympathies.
Even had Grant been the worst man in the Bay Area, of course, he should not have been shot in the back by a cop while lying face down on a subway platform, and the film's implicit plea that all human lives are special and deserving of basic dignity is a compelling one. But should a film about politically charged events that happened only four years ago simply fabricate incidents for dramatic effect?
Coogler has already admitted he made up a scene that shows Grant lovingly coming to the aid of a dog hit by a car, and staying tenderly by the pit bull's side as it expires. Coogler gave a garbled and unsatisfying explanation to the Huffington Post when pressed: "That's not the intent, to show that this guy's a great guy. That wasn't the intention at all. And that's fine, that's the risk that you run with a scene like that. I can tell you what the scene was about and why it's there — because, it's funny, it's a very polarizing scene. Some people get the intention and it's their favorite scene in the movie. Some people hate the whole movie because of the scene. Like, 'I feel manipulated.'" Coogler went on to make the point that pit bulls are supposed to be symbolic of unjustly feared young black men.
Coogler also fabricated a scene in which Grant, a convicted drug dealer, throws away a bag of marijuana to indicate to the audience that he will be a changed man with the new year: The first few hours of Jan. 1, 2009 would be his last spent alive.
Nor is there any evidence that one of the police officers arresting a group of young men, including Grant after a scuffle on a BART train, punched Grant in the face. Nor did Grant participate in a joyous, life-affirming group dance on the train in the final moments of 2008. As Variety's review noted, "Even if every word of Coogler's account of the last day in Grant's life held up under close scrutiny, the film would still ring false in its relentlessly positive portrayal of its subject."
More damning, though, is not what the film falsifies but what it leaves out: Though Grant is shown becoming alarmingly aggressive in the grocery store, there is no mention of the fact that he was once convicted for illegal possession of a handgun. And by leaving out the details of the actual shooting, the film hopes to create a strong impression that Grant was a victim of racist cops, closing with a plea for "justice for Oscar," which seems to be thinly-veiled code for a second, federal Civil Rights trial for the cop who has already been convicted in the slaying.
Activists call the slaying an "execution." But there is simply no reason to think Johannes Mehserle, the then-cop who shot Grant and was the first California police officer to be charged with murder in the course of making an arrest, did so out of depraved indifference or racial animus. Even if Mehserle had been a horrible racist who had gotten out of bed that morning vowing to kill an unarmed black person, why would he have done so in front of dozens of people, many of them filming the incident from a distance of a few yards on a well-lit transit platform?
Mehserle's defense was that he thought he was reaching for his Taser instead of his pistol, a claim that is presented as faintly absurd in the closing titles of the film. But in reality one of Grant's friends in Fruitvale Station, Jackie Bryson, said he heard Mehserle say he was going to use his Taser on Grant "a couple of seconds" before he did so. Mehserle stepped back (a move consistent with operating a Taser) and after firing the fatal pistol shot immediately displayed a look of anguish and horror, many witnesses said.
Grant was resisting arrest by Mehserle, his body was coming up off the platform, and Bryson said both that Grant's right arm was pinned under him and that he heard Mehserle shouting at Grant to show his arms. Moreover Grant (unmentioned in the film) had already fled from, and eventually been Tasered by, a cop after a 2006 traffic stop.
The death of Oscar Grant, then, was not a vicious or depraved attack of the kind that should spark rallies and riots and federal charges. It was instead a monstrous accident caused by a decision made in a split second in a chaotic and potentially dangerous situation. Grant might well have turned out to be a fine young man, but even if he didn't, this low-level criminal did not deserve to have his life taken from him so soon. Yet the movie about the last day of his life treats the facts as disposable in pursuit of a larger point about justice that simply isn't justified.
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