Fruitvale Station

Director Ryan Coogler

FRUITVALE STATION       B+              

USA  (90 mi)  2013  d:  Ryan Coogler

Coming on the heels of the Trayvon Martin shooting Shooting of Trayvon Martin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, many Americans view any young black kid as a threat and a thug, where some believe there is no value in his life at all and he likely got what he deserved, judging him instantly through racial perceptions, where they might be surprised he had never been arrested and never had any criminal record, yet there are literally millions who simply refuse to see Trayvon’s potential as making the least bit of difference in their lives.  Then a film like this comes along, offering rare insight into the complexity of a young black man’s life, yet what’s perhaps most troubling is it touches on perceptions already racially etched in stone, becoming a parable on race in America, a eulogy on the offspring of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.  This is a film one can approach through a variety of different pathways, each of which might blur the vision of other viewpoints, where viewers tend to see what they want to see in projects like this one, based on a real life incident where an unarmed young black man was shot and killed after being detained by white BART subway police in Oakland, California, where coming into the theater people already have formed views and opinions about the subject matter, especially this one, which typifies everything that is wrong in America.  While on the surface it deals with troubling realities that tend to be sensationalized in the media—young, black, unemployed, hair-trigger temper, criminal history, blighted neighborhood, unmarried with child—all of which fit the profile of how America views “high crime,” barely batting an eye when the news spews out reports of daily shootings and killings, where life seems to matter less in racially segregated, crime infested neighborhoods, but this film digs beneath the surface and examines the day to day complexities faced by residents living there.  It’s perhaps too easy but altogether necessary to cast a racially incendiary slant on the story, where all too often white cops end up murdering black youth.

Blacks are arrested at nearly 3 times the rate of other Americans, where the rate is even higher for murder (6 times) and robbery (8 times), while the likelihood of black males going to prison in their lifetime is 28% compared to 4% of white males and 16% of Hispanic males, and if that black male drops out of high school, the number skyrockets to 50%.  Matters have only been made worse by the War on Drugs, where in the past decade, the Department of Homeland Security has funneled $7.1 billion dollars in grants to local police departments, which have been used to provide local departments with military hardware, including tanks and armored vehicles, spying facilities and technology, access to national databases and infrastructure, and equipment for use against political protests.  While supposedly combating “terrorism,” the intended target tends to be urban areas with a large and highly condensed minority population, the regular sites for drug raids and arrests, where blacks in particular have a higher sentencing rate than other Americans, even for identical crimes.  So while this bias is built into the criminal justice system, it also reflects the mindset of local cops on the beat, where at the moment it is estimated that the police kill a black man, woman, or child every 28 hours, which is an increase from a few years ago when it was every 36 hours.  Nearly half have no weapon on them, or anything resembling a weapon when they were killed, though in more than a third of the cases the police allege the victims displayed a weapon, often disputed by witnesses on the scene, as only 18% (less than one in five) are actually armed.  Even though women are less likely to be killed, in a glaring way they are included in a troubling number of these deaths, as 20% result from women initiating a distress call to police for domestic violence issues, where rather then removing the agitated offender, he is shot and killed.

While one may not know the exact statistics, most are familiar with an overall racial disparity *before* they see the movie, so many bring their pre-conceived perceptions with them into the theater, which the filmmaker addresses immediately, as the opening few shots of the film are readily available and already viewed by millions on TV or YouTube through blurry cell phone camera footage of Bay Area Rapid Transit cops beating Oscar Grant and his friends on a subway platform just after 2 am in Oakland, California on New Year’s Day, 2009, ending with a gunshot YouTube Oscar Grant Clearest Video Of Shooting Post it!!! - YouTube (1:59).  Oscar had already been detained and is lying on his stomach, head to the pavement, as one policeman tries to cuff him while another has his knee in his back, when inexplicably one of them draws his service revolver and shoots him in the back POLICE SHOOTING AT BART STATION - OSCAR GRANT - YouTube (3:28).  Since this is based on a real life incident, the outcome is already known by the opening shot of the film.  The filmmaker then takes us back into the preceding 24 hours leading up to that moment, shot in a cinéma vérité style using a handheld camera, where the life of the victim is the actual subject of the film, and based on the dramatic power of the performances, which are considerable, his life is not only memorialized, but humanized, where the film puts a face behind the heavy stream of statistics by asking us to spend a day walking in someone else’s shoes that may be unfamiliar to a majority of viewers.

The movie has already won significant awards, including the Best Dramatic Film and the U.S. Audience Choice Award at Sundance, while also winning the Best First Film in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, where it received a rousing two-minute standing ovation.  In some ways, this film resembles BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991), another character driven depiction of the everyday violence that consumes so many lives in South Central Los Angeles, but that film focuses on senseless gang violence.  While some may find this film to be a jolt of social realism that finally attempts to address the issue of racial injustice in America, including crimes against black men, but there isn’t a hint of police involvement in this film until the actual incident, as whatever trouble Oscar had previously with the law, which included two brief stints in prison for drug dealing, he has only himself to blame for getting himself into those situations.  Since he does nothing to provoke the officer, some insist this is a blatant execution, seen in strictly black and white racial terms, but it’s difficult to understand an intentional murder in front of so many witnesses, though the police do significantly overreact, especially on an evening that is already filled with overly rowdy, high or inebriated New Years revelers, where the outcome of this particular occurrence feels more like a tragic accident inflicted by an amateur cop.  The incident led to marches and protest demonstrations, even riots expressing a furious outrage at the crime.

Rather than address the social conditions that precede this incident, where the music and movie industry both go to great extremes to accentuate black stereotypes, including a thug culture that promotes street credibility, where prison time produces bragging rights among gangsta rap artists, which sells more records, the director cleverly assumes the audience is already familiar with all that.  So rather than a piercing piece of social criticism, Coogler chooses a simpler more minimalist route, where Michael B. Jordan plays Oscar with convincing believability as we follow the mundane details of his daily routine, including flashbacks years earlier when he was in San Quentin prison (where his mother’s visit is one of the most riveting scenes in the film), as we watch how he handles the various pressures of the day.  While he’s butted heads with a variety of people, he’s already walking on thin ice with his beautiful wife Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who recently caught him with another woman, has left a traumatized impression for being away so long with his adoring 4-year old daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal), and he’s hiding the fact he’s been fired by his boss for coming in late so often, while his mother (Octavia Spencer) watches him like a hawk, having had her heart broken once or twice already.  

This is largely a day-in-the-life film, where Oscar awakes promising to make a fresh start on the New Year, where the drama unfolds through his personal relationships with friends, family and various acquaintances, where much of the day is spent attempting to make amends.  Oscar is in nearly every scene, where the film’s authenticity is constructed by a build-up of low key sequences given a near documentary look, where because of the nuanced, understated subtlety involved, a major complaint could be registered against the way he is portrayed by the filmmaker, where the contrived goodness of his character is overemphasized, optimistically making him larger than life in the few brief hours he has left, almost as if he’s finally seen the light, which certainly has a manipulative feel to it, especially knowing the eventual outcome.  But rather than go overboard with scathing negativity, as some critics have done, one might simply conclude the filmmaker intended to express a view that Oscar, like Trayvon Martin, had the potential to do good.  The true power of the film, however, comes from the amazing performances that literally “make” the film, as the leads are quite simply astonishing, where the lasting mental impression is how articulate and fully developed several characters become in such brief screen time, as Octavia Spencer and Melonie Diaz literally nail their scenes.  But it’s Michael B. Jordan’s film and he deserves plenty of credit, rising to the occasion and ultimately making this film matter, providing the dramatic heft the film needs to expose the senseless tragedy of what has become an all-too-often, everyday occurrence.

Pina in 3D

PINA IN 3D                            B+                  

Germany  France  Great Britain  (106 mi)  2011  d:  Wim Wenders 

There are situations that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things.      

—Pina Bausch

While well-intentioned, to be sure, the idea of extending the use of 3D technology into the art film is getting ridiculous (see the photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel adjusting her 3D glasses at the Berlin Festival premiere), as the fact remains very few films are the better for it, as the merit of a film continues to rise or fall based on the overall quality and essence of the film itself, not the use of technology, and this film is no different.  Wenders was intending a collaborative effort with internationally acclaimed dance choreographer Pina Bausch, the longtime director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal (since 1973), but she died just days after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.  The film is very much a reverent eulogy to her memory, where one by one throughout the film members of the dance troupe are singled out, many offering a reflection on a particular moment they shared together, perhaps the moment they truly felt accepted, while others simply stare at the camera in silence.  One prominent theme advanced by many is the idea that language alone is limited, that dance, and art overall, is an extension of our capacity to understand and better appreciate human expression, that beginning with the dancers themselves, each is responsible for discovering that unique voice within themselves, captured through constant tinkering and experimentation with movement, so that each personality continually radiates their own personal vision while working within a larger dance ensemble.  This mix of individuality within a community of diverse dancers perhaps best expresses Bausch’s artistic vision, combining theatricality with dance, conveying universal expressions of loneliness and alienation with the need for intimacy, mixing sorrow with exhilaration and joy, often comically absurd but always intensely engaging.  Not so much interested in the movement, more so the idea and motivating force behind the movement, Bausch remains a visionary force with a demand for autobiographical truth and authenticity.   

Unlike Frederic Wiseman, Wenders never shoots an entire work uninterrupted from start to finish, but instead interweaves excerpts from four major works, never identifying them by name or the accompanying music, but they include Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond (Full Moon), often mixing various stage works with what looks like variations on a theme using improvisational outdoor settings, where Wenders takes full advantage of the streets outside with the overhead tram passing by, including scenes from inside the tram car itself, or a countryside rock quarry, a public swimming pool, an empty, museum like all-window room with the view of a forest outside, a beautiful city park, a meditative lakeside shoreline, or various architectural settings, where the surprise element of dance being performed in a natural environment has a special appeal all its own.  What the outdoors also brings is extra light, making this much brighter than the usually darkened 3D experience.  While the music is consistently outstanding, Wenders blends various theatrical pieces, moving from indoors to outdoors, where there’s always a smooth transitional feel, constantly changing the dancers, the costumes, and the stage, where the focus keeps evolving, as if we’re part of a continuing drama that is playing out in human form.  In one of the more quietly intriguing pieces, featuring phenomenal physical dexterity, a woman crawls through a wooden chair on the floor as a man adds another chair on top of that one, which she steps through, continually adding chairs on top of that which she and another dancer safely climb through as the tower of chairs grows ridiculously high, needing a chair to stand on in order to place yet another chair high atop.  Whatever issues one may have with the tame or rather conventional manner of the filmmaking itself, leaving much unexplained and unfathomable, it is a joy from start to finish, as the dance onscreen is simply extraordinary and has rarely been presented with this degree of love and artistic beauty.  

We grow familiar with many of the dancers after awhile, probably picking out several favorites, where the diverse cultural background, as many as 17 different nationalities, includes European and Asian, also Central and South American, including indigenous natives, where many are naturally shy and weren’t sure what to expect from Bausch, who was a constant presence but rarely spoke to them, where one mentioned she uttered a single phrase to her in twenty years.  There’s an interesting mixture of young and old, as one dancer is the child of two original dancers, while Kontakthof has young dancers suddenly morph into another version of themselves as older people, still doing the same dance routine.  Café Müller, the dance of a blind woman in a room full of chairs, is beautifully featured, along with Bausch’s Masurca Fogo, in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER (2002), a dance Bausch used to perform herself in the early 70’s (seen briefly), and receives an extended treatment here, something of a heartfelt homage to the man seen frantically removing the chairs who has now died as well.  The two pieces given the fullest expression are the opening and closing pieces, the violent, ritualistic battle of the sexes in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, performed on several tons of dirt hauled onstage, an enthralling piece making use of a red scarf where a woman is sacrificed to a group of threatening men for the supposed good of the community, a precisely choreographed gang rape scene where you can hear the dancers panting audibly.  The closer is Vollmond (Full Moon), a jubilant work featuring a dozen or more different musical selections, given a modernistic twist, where a gigantic monolith style rock sits off to the side while the stage is beset by falling rain, where at first dancers playfully speed through the water with rowing sticks, eventually bellyflopping on their stomachs doing the breastroke, but eventually the dancers grab buckets of water to splash against the rock, where the spray comes flying off in a near waterfall effect, leaving everyone sopping wet.  Wenders has created a delightful if loosely structured piece that can be hypnotic at times, something of a dance mosaic weaving in and out of meticulous formations that is most fun when the dancers can simply let loose and inhabit new worlds.