Friday, December 5, 2008

Ballast ***

2008?
Directed and filmed by Lance Hammer
with Michael J. Smith, Tarra Riggs, Jim Myron Ross

This is a beautiful, slow, low budget movie. I would NOT reccomend taking your overstimulated teenager to this film. There's lots of waiting going on.

Ok it sounds bad - lots of waiting - but it isn't. The stoic characers show their suffering and scars in mostly subtle ways. Events take time to unravel adding suspense to the viewer. The slow paced Missisppi Delta landscape is haunting and lonely. And one of my favorite scenes is watching a characer sitting in front a portable heater with his coat on inside the house. These Mississippians are poor, and the flm shows what the poverty looks like. It's not abstract in the least.

The film starts out with the suicide of the main character's twin brother. The brother takes it hard and attempts a suicide himself. He is in anguish and lets his business go to pieces. Along comes his sister-in-law with a young troubled, teenager who makes certain demands of him. Not liking the mother very well, but realizing that her son is his nephew, he is torn.

The characters, and course the actors, are all African-American. It's interesting to watch poor, troubled African-Americans in a different context then the usual urban context that movie viewers usually see them in.