Ballast

[December 3rd, 2008]

Nowhere is as sad as the Deep South in the wintertime. The landscape turns bare and brittle, as if it were a house somebody gutted and moved on. The deeper the South, the sadder it is. It’s cold in a place that isn’t supposed to be cold.

Is that why Darius killed himself—because every time he remembered what it was like to be warm and full, he knew that he wasn’t? He can’t say; he’s dead. As the drama Ballast opens, Darius lies in his bed in the winter in the Mississippi Delta, filled with a bottle of pills, and his twin brother, Lawrence (Michael J. Smith Sr.), sits in the living room, just as still, preparing to be just as cold. Down the road—a cracked two-lane—Darius’ ex-wife Marlee (Tara Riggs) works double shifts scrubbing toilets; her 12-year-old son James (JimMyron Ross) is smoking crack faster than he can pay for it. Eventually, all three of Darius’ survivors will have to depend on each other for anchor—not an easy task, since none of them are overly fond of each other. James, for example, spends a significant amount of time pointing a gun at Lawrence’s head, and he’s the one who likes Lawrence more.

Ballast is the first film from director Lance Hammer, and it would be easy to call it one of those movies where “nothing happens,” except that a lot happens—a shooting, a car chase, several beatings. These things just happen very quietly. Hammer, a white director telling stories about Mississippi black life, has doubled his dare by brooking no distractions from the untrained performers and the spare images. (Watching the movie, I realized how much Craig Brewer hedged his bets in Hustle & Flow by adding a crud of bluster.) The soundtrack is all natural noise: trains passing, geese honking, a gunshot. The compositions are careful repetitions, so that Darius and Lawrence’s convenience store becomes so familiar we could navigate through it in the dark. And the screen is held by Michael J. Smith Sr., a hulk of a man who bears his poundage like it’s the accumulation of disappointments and loneliness. He never says his brother was what was holding him together, giving him a counterweight to move through a day. He doesn’t have to say it. You can see it. And you should.