by Marc Forster, 2001.
Starring: Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Sean Combs, Coronji Calhoun, Mos Def, Heath Ledger, and Billy Bob Thornton.
Rating: 8/10, 10/10.
When people talk about Monster’s Ball, they inevitably start talking about the race issues in it. But race is not what Monster’s Ball is about, any more than Citizen Kane is about newspapers. What this film is about is something more along the lines of need, human need, and what people will do when they have an awful lot of it.
There are two major characters. Leticia (Berry) has a husband (Combs, in what is actually a very good, if brief, performance) who is finally going to be executed after years on death row, along with a son (Calhoun), who is very, very fat—a fact she will not let him forget, because, as she says, you can’t be a fat black man in this world. She is struggling through waitressing jobs, trying to keep up with payments on her house as her car and the rest of her life falls apart around her. Hank (Thornton) is a guard on Death Row, who actually oversees Leticia’s husband’s execution, though neither of them realizes this through much of the film. In Hank’s house also live his invalid, racist father (Boyle), who needs to be taken care of, and his son (Ledger), with whom Hank has a very, very bad relationship. The story of the film is all about how these two weak, needy, and essentially good people (or at any rate they try to be good) meet at a particularly difficult point in both of their lives, and the way they use one another, and allow themselves to be used.
There is not a single weak link here. The supporting cast—not just Boyle, whose talent is a given, but even those you wouldn’t expect, like Combs and Ledger—give strong, powerful performances. But the focus here is on Thornton and Berry, and it is mindboggling. I’ve been a bit behind in my film-watching, so this is the first film I’ve seen with Thornton in it, and now I’m hooked. How could I have neglected such a talent for so long? And Halle Berry is, if possible, even better. She’s been getting a lot of praise for this role, and she damn well deserves every ounce of it. She is spectacular. Look for little things, like when she comes by to visit Hank and finds, instead, his father. When he asks who she is, just the way she pronounces her name, lingering on the Leticia before continuing to her last name, is perfection. I’m glad the Academy managed to take its head out of its ass long enough to give her the Oscar, before sticking it right back in there while A Beautiful Mind won best picture.
Moving on from the cast (and my intense hatred of the Academy, ahem), one still finds little else but sheer strength here. The script is smart and wonderfully crafted, letting Hank and Leticia—and, yes, the rest of them—be real people, rather than characters with one or two personality traits. We don’t have the noble, downtrodden southern black woman, nor do we have the evil-minded southern white racist man. We have people. Also, the plot progresses in a refreshingly non-Hollywood way. It is easy to imagine how this story would go in the Hollywood version: Hank and Leticia fall in love (not fall into each other out of need and convenience, but fall in love). Then Leticia finds out that Hank executed her husband. Well, the story pretty much writes itself from there, doesn’t it? No no no no no. I don’t want to say too much in this area, but...well, watch the film, and you’ll see.
The direction and cinematography are wonderful; we get plenty of beautiful images, meaningful (not just interesting) camera angles, and nifty-ass cuts.
Just a quick note—I gave this film an eight out of ten for entertainment value. This is not an entertaining film, per se. It is very emotionally involving, at times very difficult to deal with, but it is always engaging, and it is such a wonderfully made film that it, in a way, makes its own entertainment.