My ally in doing this inner-city research work is Mickey Rowe. He recently suggested that I watch the critically acclaimed movie, "Monster's Ball." I now understand why. I decided to do a formal review of the movie for this blog.
It Takes a Human Being
The 2001 movie production, Monster’s Ball, tells the story of two families in the present-day Deep South. It was not a big-budget film, but that did not stop it from accomplishing something that other producers and directors had failed to do when trying to communicate a message about the racial divide in America. Monster’s Ball effectively skirted around the topic of racism and dealt with it subliminally. If you have ever heard the expression, “…looked right through me,” then you get the idea of how the writers for Monster’s Ball dealt with a topic that modern America always seems to approach with awkwardness and trepidation. Racism was there. It was bigger than life in the plot, but you never once were forced to focus on it as part of the story. Racism gave the film a reason to exist, but it was only part of the plot because it represented the real world in which the characters lived.
Halle Berry, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance, played Leticia. Her husband, Lawrence (Sean Combs), was a death-row inmate who had run out of appeals. The movie’s title comes from the cruel nickname that the prison guards have given to the 24 hour suicide watch for the night before the day of execution. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and his son, Sonny (a very young Heath Ledger), are the prison guards assigned to this task. The tone for the movie is set when Lawrence does a pencil sketch of Sonny. When he hands the finished drawing to Sonny, Sonny tells him how it is a better likeness of him than a photograph. Lawrence explains that this is because, in his opinion, it takes a human being to really see another human being. Scenes through the rest of movie are built upon the premise that only a few of us in modern society take the time to see people who are different from us as real people who are living valuable and meaningful lives.
The impact of the movie comes from the fact that Hank, a widower who is taking care of his invalid and widowed father, is caught between two very different worlds. His father is a hate-filled racist, but Sonny, who still lives at home as well, has black youth as some of his friends. A personal tragedy forces Hank to choose a definitive path for his future. One of the most powerful moments of the film come when Hank finally chooses to place his father in a nursing home. In what is perhaps the most brilliant maneuver of the movie (it was also nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay written for the screen, but didn’t win), Hank and Leticia don’t stop to think about the fact that events are drawing them together. Simply put, both are exhausted from their fight against fate, and each has reached the point where they are willing to simply allow life to take its course. The minimal script in the movie is part of its magic, and the musical score, composed by Asche and Spencer, is haunting as it fills in for unnecessary dialog. The screenplay was written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. The cinematography has the raw nerve of an indie film in its risk-taking creativity. The emotions of the movie cannot be put down on paper and need to be experienced.
Monster’s Ball was directed by Marc Forster and produced by Lee Daniels Entertainment.
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