Monster's Ball
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Movie Reviews of Monster's Ball
Movie Review: Movingly Raw and Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
It goes to show how blind some moviegoers are in their lament that last year was an awful year for movies. In my humble opinion, last year was one of the best for movies, seeing as it was one where traditional blockbusters failed to deliver and audiences were called upon to find a bit more originality and ingenuity in their visits to the multiplex. The indie circuit produced a fine line of great cult classics including, to name a few, "Memento", "Donnie Darko", "L.I.E.", "Hedwig & The Angry Inch", "In The Bedroom"; but stealing their thunder is this beautiful, powerfully performed film, that really undeservedly missed out on the Oscar race last year.The one film I can remember feeling like as I was watching Marc Forster's sophomore effort was Tom Tykwer's third film, "The Princess & The Warrior", another of 2001's criminally ignored gems. Milo Addica and Will Rokos' Oscar nominated script (which, to their credit, weaved its way through Hollywood for years and never succumbed to that old debacle, 'script doctoring') works with characters as opposed to an iron-clad plotline, and, along with Forster's deft direction, makes the film feel like a giant wave as one event follows another in an amazing emotional rollercoaster. This is a film that commands the audience's attention and calls for them to soak in every detail emblazoned on the screen, all at a leisurely pace which some will find irritating and others intoxicating ... Forster, a Swedish-born filmmaker who studied in New York, is more than ably assisted by his cast and crew, from Roberto Schaefer's gorgeously bleached photography to the ethereal score, both of which complement the heavy, Deep Southern atmosphere.
And the cast duly deliver the kind of performances that are all too rare in many movies. 2001 will be remembered as Billy Bob Thornton's year in how he flitted from mild-mannered barber in the Coens' "The Man Who Wasn't There" to a phobia-ridden bankrobber in Barry Levinson's "Bandits" to this acutely subtle portrayal of a man searching for an emotional connection and break away from his suffocating family. And Halle Berry is his perfect match, leaving her inhibitions and her diva-style aloofness (as displayed in blockbusters "X-Men" and "Swordfish") at the door for an animalistic manifestation of a woman at the end of her emotional tether (I bought this DVD based solely on her Oscar clip). Of the supporting players, Heath Ledger, in a surprisingly short role, gives the audience something a lot more substantial and interesting than his "10 Things I Hate About You" performance gave cause for us to suspect, and Mos Def is equally good as the only genuinely fatherly father in the entire film. And Peter Boyle ... the fact that he didn't win the Oscar is heartbreaking enough for how concentratedly vile, creepy and good his performance is. Fans of his "X-Files" episode, where he played a superbly affable medium, will be shaken to the core.
Addica and Rokos' screenplay also, after hitting its characters and the audience with an enormous mounting of tension, has the audacity to end on an ambiguous, almost spiritual high that many have argued as lacking and infuriating. To be honest, the resolution in the characters' faces spoke volumes for me and, whatever happened afterwards, the newfound inner peace and the casting out of the past is what the film is celebrating. For me, "Monster's Ball" could have gained a few more nominations come Oscar time (film, director, actor, supporting actor, photography, score), but what remains is a rugged Southern diamond that will stand the test of time and prevail as a modern classic. The DVD, meanwhile, includes two witty and insightful audio commentaries by Forster (one with Shaefer and the other with Berry and Thornton), but the best feature is the outtake where Berry and Thornton, amid joking and giggling, seamlessly become Leticia and Hank infront of our eyes ... spellbinding.
Movie Review: A 'Ball' of a time!
Summary: 5 Stars
- The Setting -In a quiet small town somewhere in Georgia: Scene 1: Introductions of the leading male and the leading female, both extremely different in every way save for a past connection that links their lives. Scene 2: an unlikely love affair develops between the two after a chance meeting.
- The Dancers -:
He is Billy Bob Thornton, as corrections officer Hank Grotowski. He lives with his racially intolerant father Buck (Peter Boyle), and his weak-in-character son Sonny (Heath Ledger), both of whom are also corrections officers - the family profession. Despite their close proximity with him, he is far apart from them in spirit. He despises his father for his backward racist mindsets and his son for not having the spine to do the family job, but he gets ugly only with the latter.
She is Halle Berry, as Leticia Musgrove, a recent widow after her convict husband (Sean "Puffy" Combs) is executed. In his departure, she is left to care for her 11-year-old son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun) while barely trying to make ends meet. Her life takes a turn for the worse in a series of hardships and tragedy, leaving her all alone. Incidentally, Hank is on duty for her husband's execution, to her unawareness.
- The Dance -
Very well done (considering how much I detest romance films). Both are brought together by personal tragedies, but drawn together for different reasons. Hank wants to escape his dysfunctional family trappings and start afresh, Leticia needs companionship to escape loneliness. Their characters are so well-captured in their profiles and their sufferings, while not forgetting the hurtles of racial bigotry that both must overcome, plus their responses towards the revelation of their dark connection to each other. Forster delves extensively into the characters' afflictions to illustrate that true love can blossom not only in spite of them but also because of them. The love scenes are extremely erotic.
- The Dancing -
Thorton defines dysfunction in the middle of the Grotowski family. As the embittered Hank, he shows detached piety towards Buck and harsh overbearance towards Sonny. Boyle lends support as the weak (in body) but strong (in spirit) Buck, with Ledger as the strong (in body) but weak (in spirit) Sonny. Both are convincing in their roles to reinforce Hank's dysfunction background. In an Oscar-caliber performance, Berry is excellent as the emotionally fragile widow. She vividly shows Leticia's need for security following her painful tribulations, her grief with after every one of them, and her efforts to come to terms upon knowing the past between Hank and her husband. As for Mr. Combs' acting turn, I could have sworn he was trying to rap his lines. Maybe it's just me. But he delivers a brief but good moment of anguish for his characters coming to grips with his impending fate.
- The Verdict -
A terrific love story, even without a tragic ending. Though the interracial spin is nothing new, it is given a melancholy perspective under Forster's direction, in grim realism without the typical happily-ever-after ending. And it has great characterizations and excellent performances by the cast. The open-ending finale leaves the unanswered question as to the fate of the lovers' relationship. Then again, such is true in relationships of today.
Movie Review: It Takes A Lot to Laugh But Not A Train to Cry
Summary: 5 Stars
As I watched this film, I thought, "I've been in more than a few neighborhoods like this. Is this what goes on out of earshot of outsiders?" Well, yes and no. This film represents a rare work of moviemaking in my opinion. It isn't afraid to dwell in the gray areas of life where right and wrong aren't always clearly demarcated. If you like films that stimulate your mind to consider what is possible if not probable, then this film is for you. I'd have to say after two viewings that it is one of the best films I've ever seen. Disregard the reviewers who ridicule the film for its supposed lack of believability. This film requires audiences to transcend their own preconceptions, not suspend their disbelief. Messages abound that are both subtle and raw--a difficult balancing act which succeeds here because of superb camera work, excellent editing and visionary directing. As for the acting, this film has no weak links. I suppose I'll never regard Peter Doyle in quite the same way again when I watch Everybody Loves Raymond. In this film, he shows his true range and convinced me that he was an intractable bigot. Racial tension lacking? Apparently a few reviewers forgot the scene of Leticia's unexpected encounter with Buck. The tension in that scene is palpable. As for Berry, she demonstrates that her range of acting repertoire has yet to be fully tapped. Those critics who have focused on her lovemaking and sensuality have overlooked a lot of this film, perhaps to satisfy their preconceived and patronizing notions about her. The same can be said for Thornton. It's amazing, by the way, how he can play a nutcase, demonstrative auto mechanic in U-Turn and an intelligent but emotionally damaged prison officer in this film.Occasionally, a liberal mindset creeps into this film, but the director doesn't preach, as many reviewers have noted. For example, Lawrence Musgrave is seemingly contrite and reflective in the last moments of his life, almost making us believe he is rehabilitated. But by his own admission he is a bad man, and one which he doesn't want his son to emulate. Those who are against the death penalty would do well to remember that we don't ever find out the nature of his crime nor would it have been any easier on his family if he lived (after all, Leticia has been visiting him for eleven years--nearly as long as their son has been alive--and she has grown tired of the pilgrimage). How can it be any better for her son to know that Daddy will never receive parole?
The ending makes it clear that many problems still need to be worked out between the main characters. It is by no means a done deal and Leticia's troubled glances at the tombstones and Hank's face should have been enough to make that clear. For every racist, however, that can't forget or tolerate them, we have to believe there are many others in the community who can forgive and forget (e.g. witness the black mechanic next door). So despite its mood of sorrow, disappointment, and cyclic abuse,this film succeeds in offering a hopeful way out. If you take this film on its own terms, discarding your preconceptions at the door and leaving yourself open to the power of personal redemption, this film can be not only provocative but cathartic.
Movie Review: The Monsters Be We?
Summary: 5 Stars
There are two ways -- well, probably as many ways as watchers -- to view this film. First there are the time-honored conventions of epiphany through suffering and redemption through "love" or lust. That interpretation would take Billy Bob Thornton's sudden 'conversion' at face value, finding grounds for hope in the relationship he envisions with Halle Berry. I suspect that the logic of "Hollywood" demanded such an interpretation -- the closest that could be gotten to a happy ending. But a radically different point of view is more supportable, at least to me. Thornton's character is unredeemed and unredeemable. He's a 'control' monster, a narcissistic sociopath incapable of not hating. Clearly he did hate his son, and his father, so how will he strangely learn not to hate the woman whom he's effectively enslaved -- I use that word quite deliberately -- on the basis of her helplessness and his relentlessness? From that viewpoint, the film is a catastrophic tragedy. Pity that poor submissive woman! The horror in her eyes and the selfishness in his, in a moment you'll recognize when you see it, make all the stars of the Georgia night twinkle in bitter irony.
This is centrally a film about racism. I can tell you that much without 'spoiling' the plot, can't I? The depiction of racism is excruciating... and realistic. There are such people, even today. Racism is America's great failure, the hateful core of a society that has always claimed "God's favor". "Monster's Ball" is also above the corrosive immorality of "Capital Punishment". If the film is unambiguous about anything, it's the wrongness of Capital Punishment, although that theme goes 'underground, after the first twenty minutes. Capital Punishment isn't 'wrong' because the wrong person might be slain. It's wrong because of what it does to the society that arrogantly presumes the right to kill. Thornton's father is a monster because of his presumption of having the right stuff, of not being weak like his dead wife was, of knowing who needs killing in his world. Thornton may reject that father, out of his own hunger for 'love', but he trusts in the same self-righteousness. His son, the third-generation correctional officer, can't survive in such a world of righteousness. The most human character in the film, he is inevitably the victim of Capital Punishment, murdered by his own reluctance to murder. Capital Punishment is statist murder, inseparable from all the vices of racism and a violent society. [But don't yelp at me, dear readers! I'm just explicating the film. I'd push the button on a really vile criminal -- Ollie North, for instance -- without hesitation.]
Most of the one-star reviews of this already old film express outrage that Halle Berry won an Oscar for her performance in it. Me, I think she deserved it. The woman she portrays is so skittish, so defenseless, that her 'captivity' to the will of the Thornton character becomes plausible. A less vulnerable character would not have been such a plausible prey. Billy Bob Thornton is impressive also, portraying the repressed executioner. His transformation, to my mind, is plausible only if you recognize the ruthless selfishness it seems to conceal.
Movie Review: Song Of The South?
Summary: 5 Stars
I felt more like a voyeur than a viewer as I watched this film pry open the closed doors of its characters' lives and expose to the light of day each of their uniquely disturbing dysfunctionalities. One of the things that made much of this film so compelling to me personally was that, having grown up in a small southern town, I felt as though, like them or not, I knew a lot of these people. I think Monster's Ball hits the target with its portrayal of its southern, white, working-class male characters. For starters, the interior of Hank's home, with the deer antlers, gun cabinet, faux-leather recliners, dark walls and medical oxygen tanks, is not a sterotype, folks, it's the real thing. But the descending degrees of racism displayed by each generation of Hank's family are even more photographic. Buck is an unreconstructed bigot of the old school - his encounter with Leticia is one of the film's most powerful moments. Sonny, on the other hand, has moved beyond all that and mixes freely with blacks, which contributes much to his "weakness". It is Hank's racism that is complex, for he is clearly caught in the middle between the attitudes of his father's generation and his son's. Hank is a racist because he thinks he is supposed to be, yet it his very lack of racist conviction that allows his heart to unharden, thus making the rest of the story altogether possible. Yet another ugly (but all too frequently realistic) aspect to the character of these men is their undiguised contempt for women. Consider the terms in how both Hank and Buck describe their former wives, the mothers of their children. Even more revealing is the manner in which both Hank and Sonny have sex with Vera, the prostitute. Like father, like son; this was one attitude Sonny was not able to transcend.
An unfortunate contrast to the strength of the film's study of its white characters is the weakness in its development of black characters. For one thing, there are simply not enough black characters in this story to balance the plot the way it probably should have been. Similarly, the undercurrents of apathy and despair that govern the lives of the impovershed, and the anger and mistrust these people would feel towards white males (particularly those employed by the local criminal justice system) are hardly addressed at all.
Is Monster's Ball how the small-town south really looks and feels? Not quite, but it comes painfully close at times. Is it, in the end, a "feel-good" love story? Hardly, as the ending leaves Hank and Leticia together, but with much more pain ahead of them to work out if their relationship is to last. Monster's Ball is, however, one of the best-acted films made in recent years. Thornton should also have received an Oscar for his work here. His performance was, at the least, as good as Berry's. If your idea of a good movie is one packed with fast-paced action and special effects, then pass on Monster's Ball - you'll hate it, as a lot of reviewers here apparently do. But if you tend to go for taut, gritty human drama brought to life by a deep script and incredibly powerful acting, then you won't want to miss this one.