Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) is a death row colonel of the guards whose job it is to usher his condemned charges into the next world with as little fuss and unpleasantness as possible. He appears to be good at his job, he seems to be respected by his men. It’s what his father Buck did for a living (Peter Boyle), and it’s what his boy Sonny (Keith Ledger) also is doing now. But it appears that some of those plump peaches are rotting in the state of Georgia, especially within the Grotowski household. Without women, without even a hint of familial love the Grotowski men thrust and parry with each other. Hank is also scion to a congenital Confederate-style racism; something he practices with alacrity: hurling the horrible “N” word at a subordinate at work; even wielding a shotgun at two young black neighbor boys who have followed Sonny home. But it’s Sonny’s willingness to break with tradition that has frightened Hank, shaking his core beliefs and setting in motion the Grotowski tragedy that seems almost inevitable.

Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry) is the suffering wife of a death row inmate nearing his execution date. Young and pretty, she has been serving her own sentence of poverty and abandonment, certainly not uncommon for many young women, in this case for an African American woman. She’s also the mother of a severely overweight and developmentally challenged young son so full of longing and grief over his caged father that he eats. Snacks, actually: sticky sweet goodies he hides all over the house and which he consumes nearly as often as his mom hits the bottle after yelling at him about how fat he is and how sneaky he is. Crowning this is the fact that Leticia's wreck of a car has cratered on her, and the two of them are about to be evicted from their home. So at this particular moment in her life nothing could seem to get much worse, but of course it does.

And it is at this the nadir of their lives that Leticia and Hank come together in a moment that would have been impossible in any other circumstances. What results is a desperate yearning that causes these two strangers to reach out for each other in a moment of sad steaminess that compels us—those little people out there in the dark—to raise our eyebrows at its rawness, or grin from ear to ear in naughty sympathy. I did both.

It was one thing to bring these two very different characters together, it’s quite a different matter to find a reason to keep them together. There are constant revelations about the other that threaten to tear them apart at any moment. How exactly can Hank deal with his self-loathing and directionless life? And how can Leticia step away from her evicted and overturned life and fall for a white redneck who is stumbling over himself to try to help her, yet whose own father immediately jumped at the opportunity to wipe his feet on Leticia's blackness? Their relationship rests on a quicksand base of generational Southern apartheid; and nothing, in this film, is predictable. Monster’s Ball is a taut and focused film that deals with a number of controversies and does not once, to its credit, attempt an explanation or deconstruction of any of them. No preachy moral rectitude, no philosophical omniscience. If you want philosophical omniscience, watch any episode of “The West Wing.”

A monster’s ball is that impromptu event held the night before the execution of a prisoner when his guards get together to play pool and drink each other under the table, saluting the condemned for the good form he will show at the big event on the morrow. But unlike the lobster trap metaphor of three’s-a-crowd in the superb “In the Bedroom,” the monster’s ball analogy is a non sequitur. But we can forgive that quiet easily because of the flow and energy of this film. I know nothing about the director Marc Foster, but if this is a debut film he simply has great things ahead for him.

I credit Foster and the writers, Will Rokos and Milo Addica (the two of whom have Hitchcockian cameos in the film) for introducing complications for which they knew they couldn't resolve for their characters. But they nevertheless understood that these complications are what life is comprised of. When we see the condemned man we are not stalled by the questions of whether or not he is the victim of a racist and incompetent defense, we accept that he is guilty because he admits to his son that he is a bad man (oh course, it’s Puff Daddy!). Even during Sonny’s break away from the family’s sclerotic culture we observe the first crack in Hank's status quo in something he says to Sonny after the latter is sickened during the condemned man’s march to the electric chair. Hank lashes out at Sonny for having ruined “that man’s final walk.” It is as if a violation of a solemn act had occurred. Laurels go to Thornton for his portrayal of Hank as a man too emotionally arrested to admit that his life has been a terrible lie so far. This was a man for whom the process of death has suddenly become more than simply a solemn transfer from one state to the next: It has now become a very personal passage into oblivion.

And why is Leticia such a miserable mother? Has she abandoned her son emotionally because he is slow and fat and a constant legacy of the one man who shattered her world? Has she herself succumbed to the same form of emotional oblivion that plagues Hank, compelling her to be neglectful of her duties; forcing her to lash out violently at the one person who needs her most? Is she in fact a bad mother? Ms. Berry’s portrayal of Leticia is paced, intense and transitional. She chews scenery when necessary, and then shrinks into nothingness when the ground opens up beneath her feet.

Another subject the filmmakers didn't broach is just why the two character become attracted to each other after their initial animal coupling. Is Hank attracted to Leticia because of her youth and beautiful assembly? Light skin? Sassiness? Vulnerability? And why is she attracted to him? Is it simply mercenary need or could she actually be falling in love? We aren’t told, but as viewers we can answer all of these questions ourselves, however we wish. And that is because not only do the filmmakers respect our collective intelligence as viewers, but that they realize that in life there are no facile answers.




Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age