This seemed like an important film to see so we saw it on its opening weekend. An award winner at Sundance, it's a slowly unfolding story that starts where it ends, in confusion at a BART station in Oakland, California when a Bart office fatally shot a young man who was in handcuff at the time. It was New Year's morning 2009. It's hard to know how to respond to the story. It's heartbreaking, and horrible and not surprising. The police who pulled the trigger got 2 years for manslaughter and was out in 11 months. There were riots and protests. The cop lost his job and his boss lost his job. Doesn't quite seem enough though.
The film is very straightforward and very concerned with depicting Oscar Grant as a full and unique individual in the world. We see a bit of his history and almost all his actions on the day he died. Needless to say, there was no reason for the shooting, but calling it an accident seems like not enough either. The parallels to the Martin/Zimmerman case in Florida are clear. In the Fruitvale incident there were many cell phones recording events, many witnesses and still, 11 months.
It's truly beyond my ability to figure this one out. However, I'm glad there's a movie about Oscar Grant's last night. I'm glad his daughter will grow up understanding who her father was. I hope this film is the start of a long cavalcade of african american characters in film who aren't simply "black drug dealer #2" or "gang banger #3." I hope we see more carefully wrought and emotional stories centering around black families. There is a shameful paucity of films that depict the variety of african american stories in the US. Would be so refreshing if this was the start of massive stereotype smashing. Hope so.
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