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MONSTER'S BALL
Review by Michael Jacobson
Stars:
Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean Combs
Director: Marc Forster
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Features: See Review
Length: 112 Minutes
Release Date: June 11, 2002
“You
hate me, don’t you?”
“Yeah.
I hate you. I always
have.”
“Well,
I always loved YOU.”
Sometimes,
people have to go through tremendous hurt before a healing process can begin.
Monster’s Ball is filled with people going through tremendous
hurt.
It’s
characters are lost, detached, and empty. Relationships
are defined only by the most rudimentary terms; there is no fulfillment or
connection in them. There are
fathers, sons, and mothers, and each has a helpless sense of going through the
motions. One character, Hank
(Thornton), is the embodiment of all the others, while at the same time, being a
complete blank slate of a human being.
He
works as a guard on Death Row in a small southern town, like his aging father
Buck (Boyle) did before him, and like his boy Sonny (Ledger) is doing now.
His father is a despicable racist, which sort of makes Hank one, too,
although racial hatred actually seems like just another way Hank goes through
the motions. There’s no real
passion in it for him.
On
the other side of the tale is Leticia (Berry, in her Oscar winning role).
Her husband (Combs) is about to die in the electric chair.
Her son, all she really has left, bears some of the brunt of her
emotional storm. Despite their
circumstantial connection, she and Hank do not meet…not until real crises
brings them together.
The
crux of the story is their evolving relationship, and largely what makes Monster’s
Ball such a standout film. Few
movies I know of would have the courage to portray love in this light:
not romantic, not sexual, but born out of an almost horrific desperation
and loneliness. Hank and
Leticia’s relationship cannot be defined by conventional terms.
It rises from the ashes of tragedy, and works, strangely enough, simply
because though neither one has a lot to give, to the other, it’s so much more
than what they’ve ever had before.
Director
Marc Forster lets his picture play out like a good novel.
It’s driven by characters that are complex and emotionally real, and it
gets us close to their minds, hearts and souls.
So much so that I don’t think anyone reacts with anger or disdain early
in the film when Hank engages in a racist confrontation.
Without explanation or narrative, we simply understand that his heart’s
not in it. More than that, we feel
this is a character ripe for rebirth and redemption.
I
can’t say enough about the actors in this film…every last one to a man or
woman approached the movie with courage and conviction, and in most cases, the
performances are career highlights. Billy
Bob Thornton, who is always brilliant, has arguably never been better than he is
here. And of course, Halle Berry
made Academy Award history by scoring a statuette for her work here, in which
she completely shuns her famed cover-girl image to delve deep inside a
heartbroken woman.
Heath
Ledger, who has shown talent in films like The Patriot and A
Knight’s Tale, fearlessly trashes his image as a heartthrob in playing
Sonny with intense emotional grit that I personally felt was worthy of Oscar
consideration. And veteran Peter
Boyle, who has proven his ability as a comic performer time and time again,
scores big here by playing a hateful, unsalvageable character without apology.
Special mention must also go to Sean Combs, as the popular musician
proves once again he has a talent for acting, as he did in Made.
Hopefully, this won’t be the last we see of him on the big screen.
But
while the actors give these characters their heart, the script by Milo Addica
and Will Rokos gives them their soul. Their
words aren’t always poetry, and they sometimes struggle to express what they
themselves can’t explain, but there is a truthfulness and purity in their
dialogue that seems both clumsy and graceful at the same time.
The
future is always uncertain…Monster’s Ball never pretends that
anything is a given. Happy ever
after may or may not be in the cards for Hank and Leticia.
But the real beauty of the film is that they at least end up with more
hope than they started out with.
Video
***1/2
This
is a striking anamorphic transfer from Lion’s Gate, and this couldn’t have
been the easiest film to render to DVD. The
movie is filled with striking visuals and lots of darkness, where images are
sometimes more defined in shadow than in light. That being said, I think the movie looks even better on disc
than it did theatrically. The image
manages to keep a sense of detail where called for, and a bit of softness where
required, too…many scenes, for example, use rack focus to go from deep to
shallow within a shot, and the effect is both well used and nicely rendered
here. I noticed a touch of
compression near the very end, as the camera panned toward the night sky,
leaving a bit of haze and shimmer to the image.
Apart from that, though, this is a quality offering.
Audio
***1/2
For
a mostly dialogue-oriented movie, this is a 5.1 transfer with a few tricks up
its sleeve, including some surprising amounts of dynamic range, some sound
manipulations as we see events from different points of view, and a terrific,
minimalist musical score that enjoys the benefits of open-channel orchestration.
High marks.
Features
***1/2
The
disc boasts two commentary tracks, one by director Forster and his director of
photography Roberto Schaefer, and one by Forster with Halle Berry and Billy Bob
Thornton. The former is the more
informative one, for those looking for more in-depth information.
The second, while a pleasant listen, is mostly a lot of compliments and
congratulations going around, but with a few good stories here and there in the
margins.
The
behind the scenes footage is actually four minutes of hilarious outtakes
involving Thornton, which was a comic catharsis after the emotional experience
of seeing the film. Wait til you
see how one of the picture’s most intense scenes turns out when Hank
becomes…Karl! Mm, hmm.
Rounding
out is a video trailer, four deleted scenes, and an 8 minute featurette on the
scoring of the film, which is not mentioned on the box.
The box does, however, mention an “Anatomy of a Scene” and over an
hour of behind-the-scenes footage, neither of which seems to appear on the disc
unless I have missed them as Easter eggs.
Summary:
