Monster's Ball

Monster's Ball is a merciless and gripping drama that earned Halle Berry an Oscar for Best Actress.

The film is set in a provincial town in the southern state of Georgia, where criminals are still routinely executed in the electric chair. Next in line is Lawrence Musgrove, the prototype of a condemned man: young, black and poor. He leaves behind a wife and an overweight teenage son. The widow, Leticia, fights tooth and nail against being evicted from her home, but her suffering is far from over.

When everything looks hopeless, she happens to meet Hank. He is an avowed racist, admittedly, but like Leticia he too is out of his depth. Hank's sensitive grown-up son Sonny has committed suicide because his father did not love him.

With each other's help, Leticia and Hank pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Their relationship does not have favourable conditions, but they both need comfort and love. Hank has not allowed himself to have feelings for his son, so he is unable to grieve, but by watching Leticia he realises his failure as a father. The hypersensitive Leticia is close to being consumed by grief, but through Hank she learns that it is possible to move on. Even at the end, when she discovers that Hank is one of the prison guards who took part in executing her husband, it is suggested that she is capable of looking ahead.

So there is plenty of material for a genuine melodrama, but director Marc Forster's discreet direction keeps a lid on the violent emotional outbursts. It is therefore more apt to call the film a chamber piece, and a moving one at that.