"Well," I said to my buddy Howard Karren after a screening of this, the debut feature of director Lance Hammer, "that's a little more than half a great movie." Howard begged to differ—he thought that Ballast was great in its entirety. In any case, we both knew we had seen something.
Set in a wintry Mississippi that I can't recall seeing depicted in film before, Ballast tells the story of how a severely fractured family comes to an uneasy detente after the suicide of one of its members. For a good part of the film's oblique opening scenes, the audience gets only dribs of information about the characters and their relations to each other. A man has killed himself, overdosing on pills; in response, the man living next door to him in a similarly small house (both houses sit on the same property, we later learn), goes catatonic and shoots himself. This suicide bid is unsuccessful, and the man, Lawrence (Michael J. Smith, Jr.), is discharged from the hospital. He leaves his dog in the care of a neighbor, and sits around smoking cigarettes and not tending to the convenience store he apparently ran with the other man. Occasionally Lawrence is accosted in his home, at gunpoint, by Jimmy (JimMyron Ross), a small, fiery, and frankly dislikeable teen with a burgeoning drug habit and an attendant problem with local drug dealers. Jimmy's single mom, Marlee (Tarra Riggs), is increasingly frustrated by Jimmy's behavior. As Ballast takes its time demonstrating what connects its characters, it finds its own voice and becomes an increasingly involving and artful drama; it's what goes down as the film is finding that voice which I had problems with.
To wit: the first 50 minutes are so constitute quite possibly the most overt homage to the Dardennes Brothers that I've ever seen. Not that there's anything wrong with loving the Dardennes, but the homage isn't terribly purposeful—the shots of Jimmy tooling around on a small yellow motorbike do a good job of evoking Jeremie Renier tooling around on a red one in L'Enfant, and not much beyond that. Similarly, giving Jimmy a rather improbable affection for vintage cartoons is a bit of an art-film affectation. And again similarly, the use of handheld camerawork in much of the first half, while hardly "artless" (pace Mike D'Angelo, who eviscerated the film over at Nerve while admitting he had sat through a scant two reels—did I miss something, and now it's okay to deliver what you consider actual verdicts of films you've walked out on? 'Cause that opens a whole new wealth of possibilities for me...), is, rather, extremely injudicious; yeah, you get your sense of place in a more direct way, but with a constantly bobbing horizon line and the like, you obliterate point of view. Lot of problems.
And then, the relationships between Marlee, Jimmy and Lawrence become firmly established, an actual narrative begins to cohere, and Ballast turns, well, kind of conventional, as Marlee tries to make a go not just of the abandoned store but of Jimmy's education, and Lawrence (Smith's formidable physical presence gives off intimations of the stuff of the film's title) tries to lift himself out of his literally crippling depression. It's strong, and quietly moving material. My colleague Howard believes that what I call the arty longueurs of the first half to be essential, that the process of the film finding its own voice is an essential part of what it's about. I'm not so sure. Nevertheless, this is the only film I saw at Sundance for which such a question even came up, which may be indicative of the ambition, or lack thereof, of most of the other pictures I saw there.
UPDATE: Noel Murray, in comments below, correctly points to the reasons why Jimmy's vintage-cartoon-affection isn't so improbable after all. I knew that—but I've still got some Sundance/food-poisoning funk fogging up my brain. What I wanted to say was that it's a plausible detail that attempts to advance verisimilitude but in context plays like an art-film affectation. If you know what I'm saying.
The vintage cartoons thing was a quirk of FROZEN RIVER, too. At first I thought it was a weird affectation, but upon reflection, it's arguably rooted in the milieu: Go to any Wal-Mart or Walgreen's and you'll find DVDs packed with public domain movies, TV shows and cartoons for a buck or less. It's not a stretch to think that people without a lot of money would stock up on cheap entertainment.
As for BALLAST, I felt almost exactly as you did. Liked it better once it started getting somewhere, though I still think it's more "promising" than "great."
Posted by: Noel Murray | January 25, 2008 at 10:37 AM
By no means did I intend my post to be an "actual verdict" on the film as a whole, which I readily conceded might well turn into something powerful later on. (Given the nearly unanimous praise it's received, I'll almost certainly give it another chance down the road.) I was merely trying to explain why the two reels I did see inspired me to motor. And I stand by my charge that those 35 or so minutes constitute a calculated nexus of well-worn minimalist moves that bear little resemblance to actual human behavior. The scene of Lawrence not talking when the neighbor tries to return his dog—and the neighbor not responding in any credible way to being utterly ignored—was so risible that I more or less gave up at that point.
That said, I should confess that the irritable tone of that post was largely inspired by Robert Koehler's Variety review, the oh-so-humanist gist of which I correctly predicted prior to reading it. I'm just so damn weary of kneejerk praise for films that "engage audiences' best human responses," as if that were per se laudable. Review the film, not the filmmaker's noble intentions.
Posted by: md'a | January 25, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Review the film, not its first two reels.
Posted by: Griff | January 25, 2008 at 12:48 PM
Sorry, Mike, but your post sure read like some kind of verdict. I do wonder though. if maybe I myself am kind of out of step with the times with respect to this. When I was just a film enthusiast and reader of criticism, THE cardinal sin of movie reviewing was walking out and then writing about it, as with Janet Maslin and "Dawn of the Dead." In the current era of post-it-quick, ever-more-immediate-experience film writing, in which the temperament of the reviewer is potentially as crucial a feature as what he/she is reviewing, is that stance no longer viable? I'm not asking sarcastically, as I did in the post—I mean it. What are the new ethics of the walkout review?
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 25, 2008 at 12:57 PM
I don't consider blog posts made at film festivals to be "reviews," though my editors have sometimes so labeled them. If I'm assigned to properly review a movie that I walked out of at Cannes or Sundance or wherever, I do go back and see it in its entirety, as I did most recently with The Orphanage. (It still mostly sucked; good job Manohla.) And I usually just ignore the walkouts in my fest coverage. Ballast was so rapturously received by everyone else that it seemed like a special case; I felt the need to explain my decision to leave. Whereas I don't feel such a need regarding, say, August, the Josh Harnett dot-com drama.
Posted by: md'a | January 25, 2008 at 01:48 PM
HarTnett. Damn Internet is too fast for me.
I should note that I used to never walk out of movies. That changed when I was trapped at Toronto from Sep 12-16 of 2001. In that atmosphere, I developed a "life's too short" philosophy that's stuck with me ever since. I give movies by unknown-to-me directors two reels to make a good impression; if they haven't grabbed me by that point, I move on. But I will revisit ones like Ballast (and Paradise Now, and The Orphanage, and Japanese Story) that many others proclaim to be awesome.
Posted by: md'a | January 25, 2008 at 01:56 PM
My problem with that kind of "two reels to prove itself" absolutism is that it becomes a case of guilty-until-proven-innocent. Having tried it out one year at the TIFF, I know it made me restless before I even sat down, forcing the movie in question into an uphill battle it may not have had the wherewithal to fight.
I also don't recall ever spending the 45 minutes or so I skipped out on curing cancer or telling my mom I love her, so that life's too short philosophy never held that much water me. Mostly I was milling about, waiting for another movie to start, sometimes for hours.
Posted by: Bleeb | January 25, 2008 at 02:27 PM
How does that work exactly Mike D'Angelo? When you go back to watch these movies by unknown-to-you directors, do you start the movie from where you walked out or do you watch the whole thing? If you do the latter then aren't you wasting MORE time than just watching them the first time?
Posted by: Giuseppe | January 25, 2008 at 02:44 PM
The picture that convinced me with utter finality that it always pays somehow to just tough it out was "Baise-moi." Saw it at Toronto in 2000; about 20 minutes in, during the scene in which the two leads are raped by thugs who are very scrupulous about condom use, my buddy said "Had enough?" and off we went. Then for weeks turning into months afterwards I was asked to weigh in on it and could only get so far in articulating my case against it. Then watched it in its entirety, found it got worse, and loaded my ammo. This is also why I sat through BOTH cuts of Kelly's "Southland Tales." Even though putting myself through such pain constitutes forswearing myself, it leave me content that I have done right, just like Elliot Ness.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 25, 2008 at 02:46 PM
I'm of the mind of seeing the movie all the way through so as not to be forced to see it again.
Then again, I do understand the desire to walk out. I think a critic, like any other person, has the right to do so. The only requirement is that they provide this information if they write about the movie. Ms. Maslin's review of Dawn of the Dead is perfectly fine becuase she confessed to not having the stomach for Romero's zombie-munching. (I find myself not having the stomach for Romero's more recent attempts at "topicality" with his slo-mo zombie Art.)
Kael made it a rule of not writing about the many movies she walked out on. The one time I know she broke this rule was back in '83 when readers wrote in almost demending to know what she thought of the film version of Pinter's Betrayal. Kael, not being much of a Pinter person, walked out around the 20 minute mark. Too bad. Betrayal is a heartbreaking little movie with a surprisingly scary performance by Ben Kingsley. I wonder if Tarantino admired the film's backward structure.
Posted by: Aaron Aradillas | January 25, 2008 at 03:10 PM
D'Angelo is notorious for hating everything anyway. His not liking Ballast in two reels, or all of them doesn't really mean much to me.
http://www.panix.com/~dangelo/caps07.html
Only seven films rated above "very good", in a year like this?
If you're going to link to a dissenting viewpoint, Glenn, certainly you can find better than that.
Posted by: lazarus | January 25, 2008 at 06:18 PM
If I'm reading her right, the great Pauline did write about at least one other movie she'd walked out on -- the Monkees' "Head." See Going Steady, pp. 185-186. She's pretty darn larky about it, too. Those were the days.
And since I'm afraid I was the "buddy" who induced the great Glenn to walk out on "Baise-Moi," in hindsight all I can say is mea culpa. As I recall, the very same year at Toronto, I also talked him into passing up The House of Mirth in favor of some terrible adaptation of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" set in Hollywood. Why GK still speaks to me, I don't know.
But even so, I think festivals are different. The temptation to walk out on a bummer is at least partly provoked by anxiety that we might be missing a great movie two theaters over if we stay. At that level, I treat festival screenings as info, and am perfectly willing to sit through something in full later on if it turns out I blew the call. What made me wrong about "Baise-Moi" was that it was obviously going to get talked about even if it wasn't any good, which means I shoulda hung in there.
Posted by: addison dewitt | January 25, 2008 at 08:35 PM
While I'm delighted to see Mr. DeWitt manifest himself in comments after a lengthy absence, I'm compelled to point out that he's being more than a little hard on himself. After all, it was MY idea to enter the "Baise-Moi" screening in the first place, and likely my fidgeting that inspired his suggestion to bag, which I eagerly took him up on. I was just as up for the Bernard Rose "Ilyich" as he was at the time, whatever he says. And our Toronto experience that most strange and memorable year was in fact more or less apotheosized by a screening of Panahi's "The Circle" that lifted us both up beyond our most cinephiliac expectations. So there's that. As I'm sitting here in my living room at the moment watching the gorgeous new DVD of "El Cid," Mr. DeWitt and the brilliant Demimonde are two of the people I and C.K. would most love to have here with us, watching along. Salud!
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 25, 2008 at 09:00 PM
Bleeb: At a festival, when I'm seeing five or six movies a day, time spent just zoning can be a blessing. And a film that hasn't managed to secure my interest after more than half an hour is exceedingly unlikely to do so later on. The movies I love virtually always grab me right from the get-go. About the only significant exception that comes to mind is Late Marriage, which I very nearly walked out of at Thessaloniki (back when I used to go there) but which wound up making my top ten list once it finally got going.
Giuseppe: I rewatch the entire thing. Yes, that means I sit through the first two reels twice. But of the dozens of films I've bailed on since fall 2001, only a handful have been so acclaimed that I felt obligated to give them another chance. Most of them you've never even heard of. Things That Hang From Trees, anyone? Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth? The Chumscrubber?
lazarus: Fine, then ignore me. But holding movies to a high standard is not tantamount to hating everything. I actually hate almost nothing; my annual ratings are a classic bell curve, with virtually everything falling between 70-30. Genuine greatness is quite rare. But last year gave me Silent Light, so I'm perfectly happy.
Posted by: md'a | January 26, 2008 at 12:29 AM
Ivansxtc is a great movie. Dirty, ridiculous, melancholy...that's Los Angeles for you. I waited almost two years to buy a bootleg copy from some guy in England and it was worth the weight and the money. The sense of dread that Ivansxtc invites into the viewing process through Danny Huston's denial of death (Ernest Becker nailed in 35 years ago and no one has improved upon his argument; death is a virus that adapts to life.) made my knees knock. There's a reason why Ivansxtc has been essentially erased from recent cinema history; because it gets it right. All of it. Los Angeles, The Industry, Death. What more could you ask for?
Posted by: Chad Channing | January 26, 2008 at 08:59 PM
Somehow the following anecdote seems relevant to me--and I can't swear it's true, but everybody at the time (in the 60s) believed it to be true. Okay: When John Ciardi was poetry editor for the defunct Saturday Review, he would read only the first line of a poem--and if it wasn't good, he wouldn't bother reading the rest; how could it be a good poem if it had one not-good line? So there is fairly classy precedent for judging the whole by an early part.
Ciardi was a brilliant guy--but I always thought this was an incredibly wrong-headed approach, for many reasons.
Posted by: Ray | January 26, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Gordon Lish does the same thing when you take his classes. You read the first line and if he doesn't like it he says "Bullshit!" and that's when you stop reading.
Posted by: Chad Channing | January 27, 2008 at 02:58 PM
You can definitely sometimes tell you're watching a stinker within the first 60 seconds. (Almost any studio movie that opens with an aerial shot of a city skyline will turn out to be a waste of your time.) But two reels is a hefty percentage of the average movie, usually somewhere around 40%. That's more than enough time to know whether something's working for you or not. And in fact I have yet to walk out of a film, go back and rewatch it in full, and conclude that I erred in bailing the first time.
Posted by: md'a | January 27, 2008 at 03:07 PM