Monster's Ball

Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry star as a death row guard and condemned man's wife in 'Monster's Ball,' from director Marc Foster. Heath Ledger, left, and Billy Bob Thornton lead Sean Combs to his execution in 'Monster's Ball.'

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There was little in the Swiss-born Forster's second feature, the chamber work "Everything Put Together," to indicate the creative leap repped by "Monster's Ball." Forster appears much more at home with the widescreen frame and its compositional and dramatic choices than he did with the previous film's mannered video jazz. He certainly indicates that he's now a director of the first order; tone here suggests a strong kinship with the somber, scaling tales of disappoinment by Richard Ford. Matter-of-factly presenting three generations of the Grotowski family in the opening minutes, tale begins with Hank (Thornton), a death row guard at Georgia State Penitentiary distinctly defined by his habits, which include eating ice cream with a plastic spoon and throwing up the day before he helps with executions.

His son, simply known as Sonny (Heath Ledger), who also works as a death row guard, spends his nights visiting a local hooker. Hank's dad, Buck (Peter Boyle), a retired prison guard, is hooked up to an oxygen tank and religiously clips news items about prisoners. His racist spewings may have influenced Hank, who in purest redneck style orders sons of his black neighbor, Ryrus (Mos Def) -- and pals of Sonny -- off his property.

Hank explains to Sonny that condemned man Lawrence Musgrove's (Sean Combs) execution will be what the guards call a "monster's ball" -- without a lawyer or preacher. Musgrove's wife Leticia (Berry), with her overweight, candy-addicted son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun), visit him for the last time after an 11-year vigil but won't attend his electrocution, which movie's sophisticated skills of observation show as both more brutal than the injection scene in "Dead Man Walking" and less hysterical than the zapping sequence in "The Green Mile."

On Lawrence's last walk, however, Sonny vomits in full view of everyone, setting Hank into a violent, shamed rage. From the 30-minute mark of Lawrence's demise,"Monster's Ball" becomes for the next 25 minutes a kind of dance of death that appears to have no end: So totally devastating, and -- in its staging -- shocking, is the sense of lost lives that the movie feels like a vortex of hopelessness. These characters, penned in by a Deep Southern culture still defined by animus and inadequacies that go even beyond racism, have nothing left but to pummel each other. Thus, Leticia's beating of Tyrell for eating candy behind her back goes beyond a mother's rage, toward some unexpressed self-hatred. Never has the sight of a boy eating a chocolate bar looked sadder.

Nonetheless,a subtle change of seasons descends over the movie, as Hank quits his guard job and extends a hand of help to Leticia, which includes letting her seduce him in a scene of raw intimacy that Forster's camera catches on the sly. Hank sees Leticia as a means to a new direction; Leticia, for her part, holds much of the drama of the second hour.

It's a measure of Thornton's extraordinarily subtle performance that the changes in Hank arrive in barely perceptible movements. There's the sense, one that only comes in the most exciting screen acting work, of a thesp uncovering his character's layers in the moment it happens on camera. After the light comedy of "Bandits" and the mannered minimalism of "The Man Who Wasn't There," Thornton finds just the right balance with Hank, a man of few words but ever-expanding feeling whom the actor appears to have in his bones.

Berry's work feels no more pre-planned than Thornton's, but her Leticia is a woman of ebbs and flows that are so different from Hank's that we wonder if they'll ever work as a couple. Berry, with Forster's keen encouragement, allows Leticia to silently absorb Hank's giving nature, and it seems to transform her as well, but never in a way that announces itself as a moment of revelation. This proves crucial in pic's final minutes.

The closest pic comes to being blunt is with Buck, but Boyle, talking through his wheezing, adds a feeble surface to Buck's ugly innards that makes even this scumbag sympathetic. Ledger's perf is a short, cold, cruel portrait of a young man with no center, while rap star Combs impresses by avoiding the slightest hint of melodrama. Even more impressive is young newcomer Calhoun, whose inner struggles recall the poor young black kids of last year's "George Washington."

Working with regular lenser Roberto Schaefer, Forster explores every expressive possibility in the widescreen frame: The characters, especially Hank, appear at points to be cornered at the edges, while objects -- framed pictures, clothing, the wire hooked up to the electric chair -- take on giant proportions in close-ups. Tech and design elements never call attention to themselves, while the look might be termed Southern Humidity.

In a year of dreadful overscoring, Asche and Spencer's synth and guitar underscore is in perfect moody tandem with the images.

Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Roberto Schaefer; editor, Matt Chesse; music, Asche and Spencer; music supervisor, Joel High; production designer, Monroe Kelly; art director, Leonard Spears; costume designer, Frank Fleming; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Jeff Pullman; sound designer, Michael Kamper; supervising sound editor, Glenn T. Morgan; assistant director, Michael Lerman; second unit camera, Francis James; casting, Billy Hopkins, Suzanne Smith, Kerry Barden, Mark Bennett. Reviewed at AFI Film Festival (closing night), L.A., Nov. 11, 2001. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 111 MIN.