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Monster's
Ball
****
Cinema Releases - June 7, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
111 minutes. Directed by Marc Forster. Written by Milo Addica, Will Rokos.
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean
Combs, Coronji Calhoun, Amber Rules.
Sometimes coming home late I breathe by way of
sighs, and I feel so tired that even my hair seems to ache. My perspective
is still and sad, and no matter what's going on around me, my surroundings
seem as exhausted as my body. Now and again in this state I might notice
an attractive woman looking just as worn out, and oh, if only I could have
the energy to suggest that we rest in each other's arms. So it
goes.
"Monster's Ball" is about two people
who live their whole lives like that. Eventually they will come together,
but the movie takes its time getting to that point, and for the most part
is a contemplative and compassionate study of their wounds. Halle Berry plays
Leticia, a black waitress in a small Georgia town with a dangerously overweight
son and a husband who gets to the end of death row as the movie begins. Billy
Bob Thornton is Hank, the white prison guard who oversaw the execution of
Berry's husband. His father (Peter Boyle) is a bitter old former guard --
sick, housebound and unrepentant about his years of living by chauvinistic
code. Hank's boy Sonny (Heath Ledger) has also become a prison guard, more
out of destiny than choice; his relationship with his father is an unhealthy
one, with Hank expressing hatred and impatience as if it's expected of him,
and Sonny deciding that he will go to any length to get away.
Things happen; things I need not go into. And
then Hank and Leticia meet by chance. Something to do with their sons gives
them a common bond, but the main thing they share is mood. "I'm so
tired," they each confide to each other at different moments. There
is a sex scene of fierce intensity and tremendous release, after which the
lovers pause and Hank eventually says, "I needed you." There are also moments
in which these two people simply sit and contemplate each other, their presences
providing comfort. They can't express themselves very well in words -- Hank
grew up in a house of masculine silence, and Leticia speaks in the broken
sentences of someone who never got a chance from school. But because they've
both been through so much tragedy, they don't need to give each other pep
talks of support; being there is statement enough.
"Monster's Ball" is a movie about grief, pain,
loneliness, need and survival. It's about life and death, and the way that
traits pass down generations, and whether fate can be cheated. It builds
to a revelation by Leticia, who finds out something shocking but avoids the
screaming showdown that a lesser movie would have jumped into. Her silence
suggests there are emotional places that cannot be understood from the inside,
let alone the outside -- and yet we're not confused, because we're too absorbed
and moved by the life and complexity onscreen.
The screenplay by Milo Addica and Will Rokos depends
a lot on coincidence, and is constructed like an anthology of emotionally
draining situations. That doesn't make it phoney. Fiction always uses structure
and fabrication to arrest our emotions, and when it does so in a manner that
leaves us with empathy and understanding, it is to be congratulated. The
specific progression of events in "Monster's Ball" may be farfetched, but
we believe it, because Marc Foster's direction is sober, patient and artful,
and the performances of his actors are sincere. Thornton and Berry disappear
inside tough lives and seem to be trying to get through them; they look weighed
down, formed by experience, and real.
"Monster's Ball" is a great film. It has been
made with passion and commitment. It considers genuine personalities and
extreme feelings, and lingers in the mind, holding some kind of spell over
us long after it has ended. This is what cinema is for. To overlook it and
spend your money seeing "The Time Machine" would be nothing less than
crass.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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