Monster's Ball (2001)
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/Super 35 111m
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
A family tradition of working as a Correction Officer on death row is cut short when the youngest member commits suicide after a black man is electrocuted. His father, initially disgusted by his spinelessness, is brought close to the condemned man's family following a road accident and comes to reassess his life and values.
Review:
Unusually for an American mainstream film the pace is slow, the important details in the screenplay never really pointed, and the audience is left to read between the lines and study the actors. Possibly, this gambit is taken a little too far at the end, when the expected confrontation with the past, and with the characters' measure of comfort with each other, is left for us to guess at its outcome; repeat viewing yields somewhat more insight, however. The film deals with family lineage and disgust in a way not normally treated so honestly by American cinema (one thinks of Louis Malle), and the soundtrack is dominated by the meditative electronic music rather than the dialogue, which is not always audible. Generally a powerful look at the mores of the American underclass, and the southern black/white divide, taken from a standpoint rarely adopted and resulting in some risk-taking scenes for its leads.
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/Super 35 111m
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
A family tradition of working as a Correction Officer on death row is cut short when the youngest member commits suicide after a black man is electrocuted. His father, initially disgusted by his spinelessness, is brought close to the condemned man's family following a road accident and comes to reassess his life and values.
Review:
Unusually for an American mainstream film the pace is slow, the important details in the screenplay never really pointed, and the audience is left to read between the lines and study the actors. Possibly, this gambit is taken a little too far at the end, when the expected confrontation with the past, and with the characters' measure of comfort with each other, is left for us to guess at its outcome; repeat viewing yields somewhat more insight, however. The film deals with family lineage and disgust in a way not normally treated so honestly by American cinema (one thinks of Louis Malle), and the soundtrack is dominated by the meditative electronic music rather than the dialogue, which is not always audible. Generally a powerful look at the mores of the American underclass, and the southern black/white divide, taken from a standpoint rarely adopted and resulting in some risk-taking scenes for its leads.
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/Super 35 111m
Director: Marc Forster
Cast: Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Synopsis:
A family tradition of working as a Correction Officer on death row is cut short when the youngest member commits suicide after a black man is electrocuted. His father, initially disgusted by his spinelessness, is brought close to the condemned man's family following a road accident and comes to reassess his life and values.
Review:
Unusually for an American mainstream film the pace is slow, the important details in the screenplay never really pointed, and the audience is left to read between the lines and study the actors. Possibly, this gambit is taken a little too far at the end, when the expected confrontation with the past, and with the characters' measure of comfort with each other, is left for us to guess at its outcome; repeat viewing yields somewhat more insight, however. The film deals with family lineage and disgust in a way not normally treated so honestly by American cinema (one thinks of Louis Malle), and the soundtrack is dominated by the meditative electronic music rather than the dialogue, which is not always audible. Generally a powerful look at the mores of the American underclass, and the southern black/white divide, taken from a standpoint rarely adopted and resulting in some risk-taking scenes for its leads.