The recent acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin has turned Ryan Coogler’s extraordinary debut feature and Sundance darling, Fruitvale Station, into the must see movie of the moment. But even without this eerie coincidence, Fruitvale Station – about the death of Oscar Grant at the hands of a white BART police officer on New Year’s Day 2009 – stands on its own as a remarkable piece of emotional filmmaking. Taking tips from Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, Coogler succeeds in making a powerful political statement by ignoring the politics of the situation all-together. While a stirring social commentary about race relations in America boils underneath the surface, Coogler is less concerned with the civics of the situation and more focused on the heart of it. This isn’t a political story. It’s a human one.
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