I'm Good, We Gonna Be Good: Fruitvale Station (2013)

It is no small task to release a film about a controversial shooting against the backdrop of a heated debate of racial attacks in America, particularly one where justice became murky quite quickly and an sour taste was left in the mouth of those both directly and indirectly involved in the incidents.  It is even more challenging to release a film against the existence of very real footage surrounding an event, one whose violence is factually chronicled, yet still wildly inexplicable.  That is precisely what occurs within the context of Ryan Coogler's cinematic and poignant directorial debut Fruitvale Station.  A film that possessed such an evocative theme and decided force from its very inception, Fruitvale Station was already on my radar well before its release and the closer to its release date it came, the more it seemed as though it was on the tails of the Trayvon Martin case, whose presence invariably exists all over this film.  Fortunately, the film does manage to navigate the tenuous and troubling issues with a degree of awareness about the layers of representation, suggesting that even the most seemingly understood of individuals can prove to have a set of motives and challenges that invariably come to challenge any notion of changing or starting over.  There have been many films like Fruitvale Station prior and there will, undoubtedly, be many films like it to follow, what they all lack is an understanding that they invariably exist outside the frame of the reality, attempting to posit a layer of credibility to a set of events that can only be certain in the previously reality, thus making the film a statement about what can and should occur in the aftermath of a tragedy.  Whereas, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, from which Fruitvale Station inevitably pulls, is afforded a pre-9/11 space to create a narrative against an assumed outcome, Fruitvale Station cannot create quite the same sense of a simulacra of events.  Coogler understanding that his work is occurring after the events of Rodney King, as well as in a post-9/11 framework chooses to audaciously bookend his film with images of the real, making each fabrication and directorial choice that much more purposefully and precisely heavy-handed.  It is a profusely audacious decision, but one that pays off in incalculable ways.

Fruitvale station, begins with actual cell phone footage that depicts the arresting of Oscar Grant III, which leads to an assumedly accidental shooting, before cutting to the fictionalized version of the events leading up to the real incident.  Oscar (Michael B. Jordan) is shown talking with his girlfriend Sophina (Melanie Diaz) about their respective New Year's Resolutions, while also caring for the couple's daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal).  Hoping to get his feet back on the ground after a stint in jail, Oscar returns to his old job begging to be forgiven for his continual tardiness, which has direct ties to his selling of drugs, an endeavor that assumedly caused his jailing, which is also dealt within in the narrative.  Despite his inability to attain a legal job, Oscar vows to end a life in the world of selling drugs both for his daughter and girlfriend, as well as for his mother Wanda (Octavia Spencer) who seems to serve as the only guiding presence in Oscar's desultory life, especially considering his notable devotion to assuring that she has an enjoyable birthday.  After attending his mothers birthday party, Oscar and Sophina plan to meet up with various friends and attend New Year's fireworks in San Francisco.  The group meets up and despite the general drunkenness of those on the subway train they are traveling, nonetheless, seem to get along with little or no trouble, the general glee of New Year's celebrations momentarily transcending race, class and gender divides.  At one point, Oscar even appears to meet up with a man whose work in web design could prove a ticket to a respectable job and step in the right direction.  Tired from the events the group returns home  on an even more crowded train, at which point Oscar by a wicked twist of fate runs into an enemy he made while in prison leading to a minor incident on the train.  Nonetheless, the scuffle results in subway authorities entering the train and forcefully removing Oscar and his friends.  The two leading officers become incredibly aggressive in their methods, pushing Oscar's face into the ground and eventually shooting him through the back.  Realizing their mistake the officers quickly rush Oscar to the hospital, but it proves too fatal a wound to save and he is left on life support until it proves futile to keep him alive, the film closing with Sophina showering a confused Tatiana who simply asks where her father has gone, and in an even more sobering closing moment, the film cuts to a 2013 vigil for Oscar and a match cut of the real Tatiana crying closes the film, reminding viewers of the reality of the event and the contemporary presence of such inexplicable loss through acts of violence.

I know when I have reviewed a film like Red Eye, I praised its for its self-aware existence in a post-9/11 framework, where they understand that the ebb and flow of their narrative is entirely contingent upon an understanding that the majority if not the entirety of the audience is aware of the tragic inexplicable act of violence that occurred at the World Trade Center.  Red Eye kowtows into the absurd as a clear juxtaposition to the real violence, but also accepts that its tension is derived from that acknowledgement, particularly given its plane-in-flight setting.  Of course, the major example of post-9/11 cinema will always be United 93 poignantly directed by Paul Greengrass, but Fruitvale Station may well exist as the clear second in line to this work, in that, like United 93 it accepts that it is a fictional consideration of a very devastating and very real occurrence, one whose images are easily accessible and for many viscerally and permanently burned into their memory.  The moment of the planes hitting in United 93 is not recreated, because to do so would be to compete with a collective memory of the reality, a fabrication would seem ill-conceived and to many offensive.  With this in mind, reading Fruitvale Station as a film working within the space of the post-9/11 filmmaking framework is particularly fascinating, because like Greengrass does in United 93, Coogler accepts that his narrative is existing within the space of real images, ones available and catalogued heavily on the internet, an example of viral video becoming a powerful tool for justice and political action.  As such, Fruitvale Station is a poetic realist fabrication of the events leading up to the shooting, beginning the film with the real events as a means to assure that at no point will this film attempt to extend or challenge the reality, because it has been captured and to contest it, or undermine it would be to nobody's credit, particularly not that of Oscar who was very much a victim, as the cell phone footage affirms.  In so much, as it instead becomes a tribute to the ethereal memory of the lost Oscar, the film is post-9/11 instead celebrating moments of a remembered character, both in their ups and downs, hoping to show a scale of humanity that is discussed in the aftermath of such tragedy, while never suggesting itself as anything more than a film.  Indeed, as the closing shot of Fruitvale Station attests, no amount of glorified cinematic composition can help to deal with the tragic loss that affects those in the reality, but in an ideal world something like Fruitvale Station can at the very least afford people a space to consider their emotions and frustrations of such events, without hostility and violence becoming the immediate answer.

Key Scene:  Tatiana chasing Oscar after he picks her up from day care will break your heart, and again, this is because the film sets up from the beginning the certainty of his death and Coogler manages to make the fictionalized version of Oscar stand in for an emotive replacement nearly immediately, a challenging task made much easier by the stellar, Oscar-worthy, performance by Michael B. Jordan.

Go to a theater and see this, it is what should ideally be shown for 10+ screenings a day, as opposed to The Man of Steel.

It's A Call For Help Intended As A Private Communique: Zodiac (2007)

In the past few years Mad Men has been given a ton of praise for, amongst other things, its incredible ability to capture the imagery, culture and general state of mind of the era it is depicting, both in the decaying stature of white, male privilege as well as the ever so faint heartbeat of the change that is moments from emerging in America.  David Fincher's criminally underrated Zodiac is certainly a film with a similar attachment to such a style, all be it set a decade later and over a much longer period of time, transition seamlessly and poetically, making even his clear moments of large periods of transition seem effortless and completely within the framework of the lengthy film.  As of late, I find myself bemoaning everything that is associated with Fincher's Fight Club, mostly for its following and fans who believe it to be the sole moment of revolutionary cinema.  I am certainly behind the quality of Fight Club as a film, but much like the blind supporters of the beatniks it has its rather obvious flaws, ones that seem to emerge with age.  Of course, this is not about what will, undoubtedly, prove to be the dynamic directors most well-remembered tim but is, instead; about what might tragically be his most overlooked.  Zodiac is a meticulously designed and deceptively straightforward film, that manages to take one of America's most baffling serial killer cases and turn it into a gripping human drama that is both narratively tight and cinematically profound.  This, of course, is of little surprise, after all, we are talking about a filmmaker who always proves consistent, even when doing something completely out of his comfort zone with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Even his Netflix series House of Cards stands shoulders above most things being circulated in theaters at this very moment.  Much as it seems to be the case with so many of Fincher's films Zodiac demands that its viewers be both fully invested in their characters day to day activities, while also understanding that since they engage with an inherently terrible system that all persons are susceptible to failure, greed and ultimate a brutal downfall, and that doing the right thing is rarely reward, if not outright punished.

Zodiac, as should be little surprise, follows the emergence and tracking down of the infamous Zodiac Killer, who spent a considerable portion of the seventies randomly killing individuals in, and around, the San Francisco Bay Area.  Of course, as is the case with most crime thrillers the killer is only the secondary subject, Zodiac instead focuses on people attempting to solve the puzzle and rather literal enigma that is the killer who called himself Zodiac.  Firstly, there is the established, all be it, cynical  news reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) who sees this case as a means to blast his career to the next level, pulling no punches in his attempts to track down everything he can regarding the case.  Within the same news agency is Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) whose life as a cartoonist takes a sharp turn when he decides to decode the letter from the Zodiac, an act that leads him to become irreversibly obsessed with the case, skipping work and eventually ignoring his live-in girlfriend and children with the hope of meeting and aiding in the arrest of the killer.  Finally there is the cop assigned to the various Zodiac related deaths, David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) who realizes that the paperwork and legal expectations of his every action result in it being nearly impossible to ever arrest or come close to the killer, who made quite certain that his tracks were well-covered.  At various points throughout the narrative the three interact, although never simultaneously, in some cases Robert and Paul work together within the confines of their office, while in another situation Robert approaches David after a film screening at a local theater to explain his unusual relationship to the case and while David continues work on the case, it is eventually Robert who takes the reigns on finding the killer, in the process becoming uncertain as to whether it is justice or curiosity that keeps him going.  In the end, enough minor pieces of information assemble to allow Robert to make eye contact with the killer, in a brief but tense moment and the film then cuts to one of the Zodiac Killer's survivors identifying him in a photograph, allowing after nearly a quarter century for the killer to be brought to trial.

Zodiac is a film that is fully aware of its length, never rushing through a scene or overlooking an aspect to assure a comfortable runtime, which is something, unfortunately, that appears to have worked against it in its box office numbers.  I, however, found the film to be excellent and worth every moment invested, I would even go so far as to say that I was a bit upset when the credits did begin to role, because I thoroughly enjoyed its subject matter and execution.  I, however, say all this to consider what is going on within Fincher's relatively calculated and contemplative film.  The answer seems to be rather obvious, it is a film about tracking down a killer who is not only excellent at being elusive, but also seems keenly aware about the general misdirection and time spent organizing and justifying efforts within the police force, which allows for him to enact random murders and various misdirections, all while those chasing him are still getting the go ahead.  This woe of bureaucracy does, however, come with a certain degree of safety.  When David engages in situations with the individual who does prove to be the Zodiac killer he is afforded the comfort of back up and an advantage in the way of guns and safety, where as, when Robert begins his independent investigation he is forced to navigate spaces alone, although in the films most tense seen this loneliness rears its ugly head when Robert comes to encounter a person whose ties to the Zodiac make his every movement worth questioning to the point of paranoia.  So Zodiac seems to suggest that dealing with crime requires a navigation between the protections of bureaucracy, while also remembering that many rules are to be altered as necessary.  Of course, as the narrative also suggests, living in such a liminal world can prove detrimental, at least that appears to have been the case with Paul.  Another layer is of course the notion of time and authority, something that is always working against the characters best interests even in the brief moments of earnest happiness or positive encounters within the film.  Yet it also suggests that with time, all injustice will eventually be reprimanded.

Key Scene:  There are two time transitions in this film one of a tower being built and the other solely using music that are brilliantly jarring and help to yank the viewers back in after long narrative lulls.

This is cinema gold and was long out of print on bluray.  It has recently returned to shelves and is worth grabbing before it witnesses another tragic fate.

Documents Never Lie: Memories Of Murder (2003)

For somebody who has become a self-proclaimed academic on South Korean cinema, it has been quite awhile since I have reviewed or even watched anything from the country, which led me to dive into Memories of Murder, an early offering from one of my favorite South Korean directors Bong Joon-ho, probably best known for his massively realized monster movie The Host, if not for his spastic and cinematic Mother.  The later, as well as Memories of Murder, focus heavily on violent crimes and catching the culprits, however, where Bong avoids reality and grounding in his later work he seems completely at ease with depicting an uncomfortable amount of realness in his early work.  Memories of Murder is wickedly funny, while never failing to remind viewers that rape and murder are real acts, often, if not always, leading to the untimely death of those attacked, in this case every one being woman.  Bong is such a stellar director that even when noting that the film is based on true events, he manages to create such a gripping and melodramatic narrative that it is hard not to get lost in the spectacle and execution of the film, its elaborate nature and seemingly layered element of deception cause viewers to justifiably assume the work to be entirely fiction.  However, one may feel about the events depicted in the film, or whether Bong was even justified in portraying such freshly given wounds on screen, one cannot deny the means with which he uses this narrative to paint a picture of divides in Korea that still haunt the continually progressing nation.  Set, for the most part, in 1986, the film represents a rural area of South Korea, clearly affected by colonization, but not via a physical presence.  Bong, in Memories of Murder, creates a film that contests notions of identity and assumed privilege, particularly as it relates to notions of masculinity, age and education.  So very realized is this film, that one often has trouble situating its time period, as it is clearly not intended to visually represent contemporary Korea, yet the visual realm is not archaic either, instead existing in some area of transcendent cinematic space where metaphor and meaning are undoubtedly universal.


Memories of Murder begins, as should be no surprise, with the discovery of yet another raped and murdered body, in what has become a string of violent attacks in a rural South Korean community.  The main figure in the investigation proves to be Detective Park (Kang-ho Song) a traditionalist as far as detective work goes, although he is not adverse to twisting the words of suspects to assure the moving along of his investigations.  Park's partner Detective Cho (Roe-ha Kim) on the other hand seems to resort to violence at the flip of a hat, assuming that he can beat a confession out of any person he assumes to be guilty.  There wily tactics yield little results, mostly because they lack proper higher police education, which leads to the calling in of a Seoul based detective named Detective Seo (Sang-Kyung Kim) whose main objective appears to be linking the crimes into a series of murders enacted by a single serial killer.  Seo and Park constantly but heads, mostly as a result of Park's pride and desire to retain an alpha dog status, something Seo's intelligence seems quick to threaten.  However, as the clues begin the collect and the dueling detectives realize that one another possess some undeniable investigation skills, they slowly piece together a list of legitimate suspects and even chase down a variety of other criminals in the process.  Yet when they come to a standstill as a result of waiting for the FBI, who possess far better technology, to analyze some DNA, another murder occurs, driving Park specifically to chase the assumed culprit down himself.  Park, Seo and the assumed criminal meeting an an intense semi-shootout at a train tunnel entrance, only to be forced to let the suspect go when it is shown that they only possess inconclusive evidence.  The narrative then moves to the present as Park revisits a crime scene, only to be told by a passing girl that another man had been there only moments earlier, perhaps the killer whose whereabouts remain unknown even today.

It is hard to make any definitive statement about Memories of Murder in regards to critical theory, as so much of Bong's intent is clearly a result of his personal conviction in calling attention to the fact that this  killer has yet to face justice.  The clear choice of the camera to linger on the beaten and bruised bodies of the victims is an all to visceral call to demand that justice be sought with little rest during the process. Of course, to overanalyze this element of the film would be counterproductive, because the very act of Bong making the film proves this argument valid.  Instead, it is far more interesting to consider the way masculinity serves as a point of contention in the film, especially between Park and Seo whose desire to catch the killer seems more to do with selfish pride than with proctoring justice, especially for Park who has his communal identity to maintain. It is then no coincidence that all the victims in the film are women, one's who cannot defend against an intensely aggressive masculine antagonist, ultimately, causing Park and others to serve as saviors to a weaker sex, a problematic underlying issue of internalized oppression invariably emerges.  It is also interesting to consider the suspects when reading it through a masculinity critique, as it is clear all of Park and Seo's suspects appear to engage in varying degrees of gender betrayal/transgression, whether it be one culprit who dons women's underwear for sexual gratification, or another suspect whose telling feature is his unusually soft hands, something which is the result of his job in clerical work.  The final confrontation of the train emerging from the tunnel as a means of losing their assumed victim then takes a clear phallic meaning as it explodes out of the entrance severing any possibility of apprehending the suspect.  Masculine oppression is at the root of crime in this film, however, it is also the barrier that results in a killer never being found, in fact, the only persons who seem to be able to clearly identify the perpetrator are females, unfortunately, their voice in the narrative is relegated or ignored even in the closing moments, a masterful and biting commentary by Bong no doubt.

Key Scene:  There is a confrontation between Seo and Park in a karaoke bar in which they are both peeling bananas.  The biting nature and satirical composition of this moment hand me bursting at the seams with laughter.

This is certainly one of the premier films in South Korean cinema's history and it is somewhat pricey on Amazon, yet purchasing a copy is well worth the money, it is seriously a spectacular film.