Monster’s Ball
Take Care
It is late at night. You are driving on a lonely country road, listening to classic rock, wondering why things are the way they are and what you might do if you could unwork time, if you could change the course of events. This is what you do in the middle of the lonely night when you can’t figure out what else to do. You find yourself doing it more and more often these days. You know where you’re going, and what for, but the why doesn’t seem to matter much anymore, if it ever did.
You see them first out of the corner of your eye, there by the side of the road. You will never know why you stopped. Perhaps it was because there was no reason for them to be there, no earthly reason for anyone to be there that late. Perhaps you heard (or thought you heard) the woman’s voice, and perhaps you heard a hint of desperation in that voice. And, God knows, you know what that sounds like, although you’d never let anyone hear that particular note in your voice if you could help it.
But it doesn’t matter. You’ve stopped now. It matters even less (not that you’re thinking about it) just who these people are, and why they are there. You put the car in reverse, back up to where they are waiting for you. You get out of the car, assess the situation. Whoever these people are, whatever put them on the same lonely country road in the middle of the night, they need you. And you have to help them, there’s not any question about it, not helping isn’t an option. If you didn’t help, or at least try, you couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror — not that it’s easy to do that now, anyway.
This is a split second from the brilliant Monster’s Ball, and if it sounds as though the previous paragraphs read too much into that split second, it’s not so. Monster’s Ball is different because it requires its actors to be clairvoyant, to communicate large amounts of information and feeling in the way they act instead of what they say. None of its characters are particularly bright, or articulate, or much like most of the characters you see in most of the movies you see. They are not the sort of people who sit and talk about things, they are not the sort of people who let others in on their feelings. Everything that’s going on in the minds of Hank and Leticia and Sonny and Buck has to be communicated in other ways. The brilliance of Monster’s Ball is almost entirely due to the skill of its actors.
The initial character in the split-second explication is Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), a prison guard at a rural Southern penitentiary. (Monster’s Ball takes place inside a strange part of Louisiana where all the cars have Georgia license plates, unless it’s the other way ’round.) Hank is seriously troubled, although he would never describe himself that way, and certainly doesn’t want us to think of him that way. He is troubled, but functional, and he is functional because he works in a world where he controls things, and where he can exercise his prejudices and quirks in a more-or-less socially acceptable way. He is in charge of the detail that sends condemned prisoners to their deaths. This is a meticulous process, one where any mistake is unforgivable. It is a process that suits Hank, not least because it affords him a small opportunity to show compassion that he otherwise might not have had. But if an error happens, and it does, it’s enough to result in serious damage to everyone involved, damage that leads Hank to desperate nights on lonely country highways.
Which is where he encounters Leticia (Oscar winner Halle Berry), not for the first time, but not that it matters. Leticia is damaged and troubled. Her husband has been executed for some vague, nameless crime. Her ancient car is overheating. She is losing her small house, which she tries to keep cheery with gaudy red-orange curtains that are a fashion cry for help in and of themselves. She works long hours in cheap diners, living on whatever tips she can scrounge. She is on a razor’s edge, getting cut every time she slips, which is often. And when she has to endure yet another tragedy, getting cut to the bone this time, she has nowhere else to turn, no sure way to heal.
Monster’s Ball touches on all sorts of social issues, but thankfully doesn’t preach on any of them. There are split seconds in the movie that speak volumes about racism, and class, and the death penalty. But Monster’s Ball is the farthest thing from a Hollywood “message movie”, its chosen themes are duty and grief and reconciliation and heartache.
Most importantly, Monster’s Ball is about human beings having the courage to care for each other. The heroine of the outstanding Ghost World at one point pouts, “I just need someone to be nice to me for five minutes.” Hank and Leticia need more than that, absolutely have to have more than that, and their need to care and be cared for is the engine that drives the movie. Monster’s Ball has no commonality with movies that show shallow, attractive people with well-articulated desires. Instead, it shows us flawed, needy, imperfect people with deep inarticulate needs that find their way to one another. Monster’s Ball is a moving film full of split seconds where every word and every action tells. It is brilliantly acted and skillfuly directed, and eminently worth your time. Finally, 2001 has a movie worth caring about.