Wednesday, January 23, 2008
News Sundance review: Ballast
Posted by Glenn LaFollette on Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 5:39 PM
BALLAST
(USA, 2007, 96 min, color, 35mm)
Directed/written by Lance Hammer
Starring Michael J. Smith Sr., Jim Myron Ross, Tarra Riggs, Johnny McPhail
You are going to hear quite a bit about this film, and I will be honest, I cannot figure out why. It has affected me to such a degree that I will not be using contractions throughout this entire review. I want every word to be spelled out against the growing storm of enthusiasm for this film by first-time director Lance Hammer.
The story is simple, and that may be its greatest problem. Ballast is a movie about a tragedy and its affect on a small Mississippi family. There are three main characters who deserve our attention. We meet James first, a 12-year-old boy with too much time on his hands. Then there's Lance Lawrence, an older man who shares ownership of a local store with his twin brother Darius. Tragedy slips in when Lance Lawrence finds his brother dead, having committed suicide for some reason we are never adequately given.
Perhaps living in rural Mississippi is enough. Ballast does do a good enough job of emphasizing the monotony of such an existence. No one expresses this better than our third character, Marlee, a struggling single mother who pays for her trailer and son James' motorbike gas by scrubbing toilets all day.
It does not take long to figure out the connection. Darius was the father of James, but was never around. Instead of trying to pick up the pieces, Lance Lawrence attempts to take his own life. A gunshot wound to the chest lands him in the hospital.
Nothing worth remembering happens until we finally get to how Lance Lawrence deals with his new life. He returns to find his home burglarized by his nephew, who suddenly has taken an interest in his newly deceased father.
The pair's relationship builds in one of the film's stronger sequences, with young James returning on multiple attempts to rob his uncle at gunpoint to fund his growing crack habit. I'm not making this up, but it doesn't come off as bad as it might sound.
James finds that his new cash cow draws the attention of his older, crack-dealing friends. They want a donation for their services and harass James and Marlee to get it. The unwanted attention leads the mother-son pair to escape to Darius' empty yellow home, which sits across the property of Lance's Lawrence's blue identical one.
Darius left the house to Marlee to atone for his years of absence in James' life, but the gift soon becomes a curse as the three are forced to deal with the tragedy and the awkwardness of their new arrangements with each other.
Ballast is a film that plays off of understatement in trying to develop an inner-personal look at the fractured lives of these three characters. It is at times beautiful but seemingly always boring. If I were to wander into a student film festival and catch this, I might not be so harsh. But this is Sundance and what I expect is an effort not grounded in mediocrity.
Hammer's skill in framing a painfully real rural Mississippi town should not be lost, but what it seems to be more often than not is space filler and not masterfully sculpted puzzle pieces. And lost in the filler are some truly worthwhile moments and performances by an all nonactor cast.
The idea of man dealing with the forsaken family of his twin brother should ooze with compelling possibilities. What we get are endless amounts of painful dialogue, unnecessary montages and cinema as stale as a low fat Saltine cracker.
I wanted to respect Hammer's work for what he was trying to do, but the more I think about it, I feel like his great accomplishment with Ballast was fooling people into seeing something that wasn't there. A good idea is worth a reward, but not when it fails to deliver on its potential.
Rating: D
Comments (3)
Showing 1-3 of 3
First off, "Lance" is the directors name, while "Lawrence" is the characters name. Little mix up but no big deal. I think what you are really asking for from the film, with all of your desired expose, is a blockbuster, American film. Sometimes it is so wonderful to experience a film that doesn't treat the audience as if they were unable to, not only GET the point, but as if we were to unable to just revel in something as primitive as a simple story of human life. I'm afraid that the constant "need" for grandeur is what makes US cinema so lackluster. How many explosions does one need to be fulfilled? I can see how sometimes a "stating the obvious" film can be good. I get sick too and I can slurp chicken soup with the best of them, but to say that Ballast is sub-par because it lacks in expose is simply tragic in and of itself. The "hype" just might so happen to be the fact that it attempts to tell a story. So be it a simple one with no soundtrack, at least he achieved HIS intention. Ballast Rating: B+
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I'm glad someone else has seen this, and if it's true that somehow I'm looking at Mona Lisa and just seeing a smug fat chick, I'm sorry. But I really don't think so. I think it's a film worth seeing because of the obvious intrigue. If you took the idea for the story, wrote it on a couple sheets of paper and slid it across the table, I'd say that sounded like a wonderful story. It doesn't need to be 'American.' It doesn't need grandeur. What it needs is to translate from those sheets of paper, onto the screen into a wonderful film as well. And it's not. I don't need a soundtrack. 'No Country for Old Men' jumped through that hoop and was spectacular. And there are several films that peer into the real world and come away with some substance. I just don't see it here, but others might. All I see is a good idea from a director who may have a brilliant vision, but doesn't see the mistakes right in front of his nose. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes a Lawrence becomes a Lance. And sometimes a reviewer sees a smug fat chick instead of the Mona Lisa. I dunno. We all make mistakes, and I think Hammer did with this film. When it wins something, I'll fetch the tar and feathers.
Get your buckets ready. I think it is safe to say that "Ballast" didn't have the same budget as "No Country for old Men". I do agree that it was a great film, but it comes with experience and, in reality, money. I guess maybe it's best to just agree to disagree. Nothing can be perfect. I don't think it's the Mona Lisa either. Far from it. It doesn't make me freak out and "wanna. like, text my friends 'OMG!' and, like, this movie is sooooo good", but it could be worse. It could have been yet another "indie" film with a Jon Brion knock off soundtrack and some cool NYC kids walking around being all "like" junior-existentialists. p.s. No country for old men was a bit grande in comparison. Simple to a degree, but I do recall a few explosions.
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