Fruitvale Station Screen Shot Analysis

Fruitvale Station




The scene I chose to analyze is the scene in which the lost dog is hit by a car and the driver of the car just rides off like they don't care.

At first we see Oscar at the gas pump, pumping glass. It starts as a close up on his had then moves to a closes up on his face where we see something has caught his attention.

Then the camera goes to a medium close shot of a dog (a pitbull which is considered one of the most dangerous and misunderstood breed of  dogs).

At first we see that close up of Oscar interacting with the pitbull (who is very mild mannered)during which he checks the dog for a collar but doesn't find. This verifies that the dog is lost and does not necessarily have a owner.

After the screen shift back to Oscar leaving the dog to go pump his gas we hear the sound of what seems like a car and a dog whelp. This is followed by a shot of Oscar yelling at a car and chasing after it shouting epithets as the car drives away into the back ground.

Then the camera shifts to view of the dog lying in the street. The view is over the shoulder of Oscar so that neither Oscar or the dog are the main focus.

As Oscar walks over to the dog, the camera shift to a close up of the dog as we can clearly see that the dog is bleeding out. This mimics the ending where we see Oscar bleeding out after he has been shot. Also in the background we see that no one is around which could serve to be a metaphor for no one cares.

At the end of the scene we see a teary eyed Oscar and close the eyes of the nameless dog as the dog dies and lay him on the sidewalk out of the way of further cars.

I think this scene serves two purposes. The first purposes is the scene aligns the fate the dog and Oscar together. Both the dog and Oscar are misunderstood "breeds" and both have certain stereotypes about them. Both are murdered for no reason and it would seem that both Oscar and the dog are left to die (of sorts). This scene foreshadows Oscars fate (even though we see in the beginning what happens) and in aligning his fate with the dog's, it seems to say that Oscar's life is worth as much a dog (or so it insinuates that those who committed the crime and those that punished Oscar's killers seemed to think so). The second purpose of this scene is to show the humanity of Oscar. We see that Oscar did look to see if the dog belonged to anyone, and we see that he clearly had sympathy for the dogs life and sought to show it kindness. This, therefore,was meant to counterbalance the wrongful acts that we had already saw/heard Oscar commit (the lying, infidelity, drug dealing) with the fact that he was still a good person, just a good person who had made mistakes. I think this scene is thus very crucial to the plot of the movie.