Fruitvale Station Analysis
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This film is a portrayal of the true story of Oscar, a 22-year-old who wakes up on the morning of December 31, 2008 and feels something strange. Not knowing what this feeling is he decides to take a look at his resolutions he made which were being a better son to his mother (her birthday is on New Year’s Eve), being a better person to his girlfriend and being a better father to T, their daughter. He knows this will be hard and that becomes clear when he crosses path with friends, family and strangers, each meeting shows us that there's a lot more to Oscar and not everything you see is him truly. The final encounter would shake the whole of the Bay Area and cause the entire nation to witness and take in the story of Oscar Grant.
The genre for this film is reality drama with a sense of romance. The key genre is however biography and drama due to the overall meaning of the film and the fact that it is based off a true event and includes the drama that happened. For example you are presented with the day that the event unfolded but then brought back to the past to understand what let up to this tragedy. Each scene has it’s own suspense and dramas it seems and you are truly gripped throughout it, this relays to the audience that the drama and reality of this whole story is what grips you, it also makes you think about the events and how something so dreadful could happen. The sense of romance is seen with the connection between Oscar and Sophina in the beginning but as the film progresses you see the breakdown and how something seen as so good can be lost in a second, as throughout you suspect Oscar but you later on find out the truth and that is when it blows up. The film involves a variety of themes that contribute to the overall atmosphere of the film. The themes include betrayal, brutality and racial hatred. All of these themes are evident throughout the film and truly do make up the film.
The thing i found truly horrific is the fact that the stuff you see in most films never happen but in this one they do and even in our society today it is reality, like many events seen in America. In the last year we have seen news stories from Sandra Bland who was pulled over for a mild traffic violation and then arrested and held and later found hanged, in the video shown of Sandra Bland you saw how the law enforcement were wrong and this was mainly due to her skin colour. Secondly was a murder of a black man called Jonathan Sanders who was strangled to death by officers and held in a grip for 20 minutes even though he was saying ‘I can’t breathe' . These stories and events are something you don’t realise happen until it happens on this scale like in Oscar Grant’s case something so tragic yet it happens and nearly all cases the police never get blamed.
I feel the representation for this film was that of acceptance and relationship. This is not just the relationship of people but the relationship of races, differences and an event. Through this film you do see clear separations between people but as it progresses you begin to see people coming together when the truly horrific even happens. This is really seen in the true footage of the aftermath the protests held by people, not caring about anything other than getting justice. This story really did open my eyes to the reality that when people are given a slight bit of power they go way to far, but in their eyes they are able to say but i had the authority and somehow it will be justified mainly due to the police department not wanting to get a bad name or representation. I felt this really touched me but also angered me to know that this happens everyday, the count this years for police killing in the US has been around 547 so far, so its headed for around 1,100 for the year. This amount is crazy and really unneeded, the worst thing about this is the fact that black Americans are twice as likely to die, this is truly unbelievable. Seeing how this world is messed up and really how many have justified this sickens me and needs to change.
Overall i really enjoyed this film as it open my eyes and truly made me think about the world today and what many get away with. Each scene gripped me completely, every emotion took place in the film with the actors but also with me, i feel this shows how strong and passionately they portrayed the event, making it feel like i was there and experiencing everything they were, truly breathtaking. Unexpected was definitely a word that would describe my emotion towards this film and i loved it.
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