Marvel’s move to always get away with making their movies isn’t exactly a secret. It is enough to look at the curriculum of the majority of contracted directors to see how most of them have most intimate indie movie experience, and usually have few movies to their credit. Thus, it is easier to have a position of power.
It doesn’t always work out for them, sometimes the play brings a couple of green dogs that end up giving different and interesting results, as is the case with Taika Waititi and more recently Ryan Coogler. The director of ‘Black Panther’ and its sequel ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ had only ‘Creed’ on his resume. The legend of Rocky’ as a mainstream cinema experience.
And in it, as in his marveladas, he stood out for his way of introduce humanism and political issues in films that usually do not have space for it. Which connects directly with its origins in indie.
A night of hope, a night of horror
‘Fruitvale Station’ is his debut and his only film apart from these aforementioned blockbusters. It is available to view on Lionsgate+ (which will disappear from the scene next March), and it is interesting to see how some of its thematic and artistic cues are already present here, and there are even details of ‘Wakanda Forever’ directly taken from here. It is also an opportunity to see one of the best works of a superlative actor like Michael B. Jordan.
The film is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a young African-American from the Oakland, California area, at a strange crossroads in his life. He must provide for his wife and his daughter, but he has recently lost his job, which puts him in a precarious situation that also leads him to rethink your life up to that point.
Everything takes place on New Year’s Eve 2008, where he goes out to have a good time with his friends, but when he finds himself involved in a fight, the police will approach him, who will not only arrest him but will cause a tricky situation that will escalate until have dire consequences for him. What began as a turning point night towards a new life becomes scariest new year movie.
‘Fruitvale Station’: human moments in the dark
Coogler assures that, even in his blockbusters, he tries to pour out personal experiences and the emotional and political conflicts that a black person like him lives in the world. Being also from Oakland, Grant’s story feels especially personal even though he didn’t have the run-in with the police. That is why his escalation is poignant, since he goes urgently and furiously building a story of injustice.
However, in its emotional whirlwind where you can see a certain influence of Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’, there is also space for very careful and even beautiful human moments. Not so much because they are purely beautiful, but because of how Coogler lets them breathe and soak into the viewer in order to fully connect with the characters. It is precisely the key, together with how it relates the experience of minorities, which differentiates its blockbusters from the rest of current productions. It’s certainly not the movie that anticipates an auteur making $200 million movies, but it is exquisite on its own.