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Ballast (2008)

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Finely directed modern American drama, 30 March 2008

Author: rasecz from United States

This is very much a modern American drama. Though issues such as drugs, gangs, broken family relations, violent poorly managed schools, unemployment, and financial breakdowns play a role in steering the lives of the principal characters, the primary emotion is sorrow. The suicide of a twin brother is the trigger that brings three characters -- the brother of the victim, the ex-wife and son -- to clash.

Given the fine performances of the three principals and the supporting cast, it is hard to believe that those roles are played by non-professionals. The director picked them from the local population, deep in the Mississippi Delta. Certainly there is talent here, the woman especially. But credit is due to the director who expertly calibrated the acting, mixing the right doses of melancholy, anger and disappointment. The same can be said of the environment. The wintry landscape with its scattered naked trees, resting agricultural land, and gray skies add to a sense of continual sadness.

Thankfully the director spared us from a musical track. The sounds are natural. The light as much. The plot linear. The Dogma rulebook applied.

The end is abrupt. The beginning is almost as abrupt. The past can be guessed. The future is an open question as it carries conflicting emotions. How you choose to continue the story in your mind depends on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Ballast a must see, 14 May 2008

Author: ephes3 from United States

A movie about life after suicide can be very hard to depict, Ballast brings out the reality of life after suicide and the consequences of those actions. Filming in the South was excellent. The realness of what can happen after suicide was depicted in James' character. So many kids who loose a parent (especially a father) turn to the rough side of life. Marlee and Lawrence's characters were so real. Both of them should be commended for their acting skills. This is a must see film. The entire cast was very good. Lance Hammer did an excellent job in writing, directing, and producing this film.I was wondering if this was written from true accounts? The plot is so real to what is happening today, especially in the south. James and Lawrence's characters were very believable. Using local non-professional actors was risky, but all of them did an awesome job. There is so much talent in the south. Kudos to the entire cast including those who spoke only by body language.I hope this film wins lots of awards. I hope to see more of Lance Hammer's work.

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Good intentions, 3 August 2008

Author: kosmasp

Another reviewer compared the technical making of this movie, the look of it to the Dogma style. You can say that, but it doesn't stop there. The story as it is, the pacing of the movie, the characters etc. are all kept with a minimum amount of "action". Of course this serves the overall appeal of the story (drama) very well and the director does a fine job here.

It still will leave a few people wanting more excitement, something more magical, something more active. Because to call the main character of the movie active, would be a very big stretch of the word! While I do liked his performance and the movie overall, I struggled with the vote ... I could also have given it a 7 (or a very stretched, for me at least, 8), but I decided against that, because I do think that the movie could have used a little bit more "spice" (something extra)

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
An intense debut shot with love and conviction in the Mississippi Delta, 13 May 2008

Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

First-time LA-based director Lance Hammer's powerful, naturalistic film seeks to capture what he sees as the prevailing sadness of the Mississippi Delta landscape through its concentrated portrait of a little black family torn by terrible grief and gradually struggling from despair to reconciliation and hope. Ballast begins with a shaky camera shot of a flock of birds flying away across a plain in the Mississippi Delta, then to violent events too fast to grasp completely. A white man, John (Johnny McPhail), comes to the door of a little house to ask Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith Sr.) what's wrong. He won't speak, goes outdoors and a shot rings out. He's shot himself. John calls 911 and Lawrence is rushed to the hospital. For a while this almost looks like an episode of "Cops." The hand-held camera throws the viewer in the heart of all this action with a palpable documentary-style intimacy.

Things cool down a bit as the camera moves over to the house nearby on the same lot where a mother, Marlee (Tara Riggs), lives with her teenage son James (JimMyron Ross). Marlee works in a lousy job cleaning latrines. James is on break from school and pays visits to young drug dealers he owes money to. Rudderless and confused about his dead father, a recent suicide and Lawrence's twin, who never visited him, James turns to desperate and risky behavior that he tries to hide from his mother. The drug dealers pay a threatening visit to James's house.

Back from the hospital Lawrence remains so paralyzed by grief over his brother's suicide perishables are going bad in his little convenience store and he can barely speak, let alone reopen the store and resume normal life. Marlee gets fired from her job and there's no money. James wanders the fields, his only friend perhaps the family dog, the half-wolf Juno. Slowly, the three let out their grievances and begin reconciliation and a solution that involves the property the twins' late father left them and an uneasy cooperation between Lawrence and Marlee.

Hammer's film-making, which got him consideration at the Berlinale and two top prizes for directing and cinematography at Sundance in early 2008, involves a strong camera and meticulous natural sound (with no music), but above all the director's own commitment to humanistic integrity. His various models include Mike Leigh, Charles Burnett, and the Dardennes--Leigh for the attention to family conflicts, Burnett for truth about African-American life, the Dardennes for a method in which the camera literally dogs the footsteps of ordinary people in crisis.

This isn't digital but 35 mm. Technicolor in widescreen, by Lol Crawley, edited by Hammer. Dolby Digital sound designed by Kent Sparling of George Lucas' Skywalker Sound and edited by Julia Shirar (who's worked with Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach) was designed by Sam Watson, a Mississippi native, all with close, committed involvement in the project.

Essential to Hammer's approach was to use local people in the main roles and a screenplay whose dialogue was frequently rewritten by the actors who embellished their scenes with improvisation. Even when James' dialogue at some points is nearly inaudible, the sound crew kept that. Though this may be a dubious nod to authenticity, the film is so involving that it hardly leaves the viewer time to think. If this is the Dardennes, it is the Belgian brothers working in top form--save for the ending, which is no resolution or even a question mark, just an abrupt blackout. However, the whole second half of the film is a struggle toward resolution that gives a surprise sense of hope slowly emerging out of what middle-class viewers in particular might tend to see as an utterly hopeless situation.

Seen as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2008. To be distributed by IFC Films in late August 2008.

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3 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Impressive quiet drama, 24 January 2008

Author: ArizWldcat from Ogden UT

We saw this at Sundance 2008, and found it to be deliberately slow, but also quite thoughtful as it told the story of a man whose twin brother's suicide devastates him. The story extends to the dead man's ex wife and son and explores the aftermath of the suicide and its effects on these three characters. What makes this film impressive is that the actors involved in almost every role had never acted before. The director revealed to us at the Q&A session that he had gone to churches in the Mississippi Delta and recruited people to be in his film. Also notable is the sound, or lack thereof. Instead of a busy, noisy soundtrack, this was a quiet film with very little music, relying instead on the ambient noise of the area in which it was filmed. We enjoyed the film and wish the director and the actors much success.

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