Ballast

A movie about life after suicide can be very hard to depict, Ballast brings out the reality of life after suicide and the consequences of those actions. Filming in the South was excellent. The realness of what can happen after suicide was depicted in James' character. So many kids who loose a parent (especially a father) turn to the rough side of life. Marlee and Lawrence's characters were so real. Both of them should be commended for their acting skills. This is a must see film. The entire cast was very good. Lance Hammer did an excellent job in writing, directing, and producing this film.I was wondering if this was written from true accounts? The plot is so real to what is happening today, especially in the south. James and Lawrence's characters were very believable. Using local non-professional actors was risky, but all of them did an awesome job. There is so much talent in the south. Kudos to the entire cast including those who spoke only by body language.I hope this film wins lots of awards. I hope to see more of Lance Hammer's work.

I took a while to trust this film, since it is one of many new indies to start very slowly, with much that is unexplained and not only minimal sound effects, but in fact even minimal ambient sound. There's a number of new films that start this way and never get anywhere after that. Here however there's a slow but inevitable build, and much of what's unexplained becomes intuitively clear as the film progresses. The uncle's first few encounters with his nephew are beautifully set up and played, with their undercurrents clear early on. The story at one point becomes a bit predictable, but nonetheless engaging. The characters are very rich without any surface effort or telegraphing. I'm iffy on the ending, and I don't know that I'd want to watch a number of films like this in a row. But it has definite authority, and shows immense promise.

If I want to spend a few hours out of my day to get to a cinema and spend my money to watch a film, any film, then I want it to be worthwhile. Believe me, Ballast I would have paid for twice, it's that good. And I'll be buying the DVD too.

During the Glasgow Film Festival this year, this (to us) obscure, indie film played at a multiplex and my husband - who actually met the director at the London Film Festival - urged me to see it. Why? Because I'm also a filmmaker, so I share with the director, Lance, the desire to eschew the commercial imperative when it comes to telling straight stories.

Lance, if you read this - I adored this film. It's everything - flaws and all - that I want to see on screen. The integrity of the cast, no matter where you found them, the screen craft - the photography, script, design, sound, edit, costume, makeup - or judicious lack of - all fell into place. It's what they say about making films - so many get made, but so seldom do the planets align to make a beautiful one. This to me is the bomb. I love it.

I wish you every success in your future projects.

May Miles Thomas, Elemental Films, UK

First-time LA-based director Lance Hammer's powerful, naturalistic film seeks to capture what he sees as the prevailing sadness of the Mississippi Delta landscape through its concentrated portrait of a little black family torn by terrible grief and gradually struggling from despair to reconciliation and hope. Ballast begins with a shaky camera shot of a flock of birds flying away across a plain in the Mississippi Delta, then to violent events too fast to grasp completely. A white man, John (Johnny McPhail), comes to the door of a little house to ask Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith Sr.) what's wrong. He won't speak, goes outdoors and a shot rings out. He's shot himself. John calls 911 and Lawrence is rushed to the hospital. For a while this almost looks like an episode of "Cops." The hand-held camera throws the viewer in the heart of all this action with a palpable documentary-style intimacy.

Things cool down a bit as the camera moves over to the house nearby on the same lot where a mother, Marlee (Tara Riggs), lives with her teenage son James (JimMyron Ross). Marlee works in a lousy job cleaning latrines. James is on break from school and pays visits to young drug dealers he owes money to. Rudderless and confused about his dead father, a recent suicide and Lawrence's twin, who never visited him, James turns to desperate and risky behavior that he tries to hide from his mother. The drug dealers pay a threatening visit to James's house.

Back from the hospital Lawrence remains so paralyzed by grief over his brother's suicide perishables are going bad in his little convenience store and he can barely speak, let alone reopen the store and resume normal life. Marlee gets fired from her job and there's no money. James wanders the fields, his only friend perhaps the family dog, the half-wolf Juno. Slowly, the three let out their grievances and begin reconciliation and a solution that involves the property the twins' late father left them and an uneasy cooperation between Lawrence and Marlee.

Hammer's film-making, which got him consideration at the Berlinale and two top prizes for directing and cinematography at Sundance in early 2008, involves a strong camera and meticulous natural sound (with no music), but above all the director's own commitment to humanistic integrity. His various models include Mike Leigh, Charles Burnett, and the Dardennes--Leigh for the attention to family conflicts, Burnett for truth about African-American life, the Dardennes for a method in which the camera literally dogs the footsteps of ordinary people in crisis.

This isn't digital but 35 mm. Technicolor in widescreen, by Lol Crawley, edited by Hammer. Dolby Digital sound designed by Kent Sparling of George Lucas' Skywalker Sound and edited by Julia Shirar (who's worked with Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach) was designed by Sam Watson, a Mississippi native, all with close, committed involvement in the project.

Essential to Hammer's approach was to use local people in the main roles and a screenplay whose dialogue was frequently rewritten by the actors who embellished their scenes with improvisation. Even when James' dialogue at some points is nearly inaudible, the sound crew kept that. Though this may be a dubious nod to authenticity, the film is so involving that it hardly leaves the viewer time to think. If this is the Dardennes, it is the Belgian brothers working in top form--save for the ending, which is no resolution or even a question mark, just an abrupt blackout. However, the whole second half of the film is a struggle toward resolution that gives a surprise sense of hope slowly emerging out of what middle-class viewers in particular might tend to see as an utterly hopeless situation.

Seen as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2008. To be distributed by IFC Films in late August 2008.

Winner of cinematography and director awards at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for the Jury Prize at Sundance and Berlin, Lance Hammer's Ballast is an American original. Performed by non-professional actors and shot with a hand-held camera, the film looks at the lives of three distraught people in the Mississippi Delta, conveying with passion their ability to discover their own humanity and transcend the circumstances of their life. Using only the ambient sounds of nature, and portraying events in an elliptical manner that forces us to fill in the blanks, Ballast is reminiscent of the minimalist masterpieces of the Dardennes' and Charles Burnett, but has a unique rhythm all its own.

Shot on 35 mm along the Mississippi Delta, it is a film that quickly establishes mood and suspense and creates an emotional range that travels from anger and sadness to hope and joy. As the film opens, 12 year-old James (JimMyron Ross) chases a flock of birds in an open cotton field during the winter. The camera then shifts to a distraught man, Lawrence (Michael J. Smith, Sr.) sitting alone in his living room in the house next to his sister-in-law, Marlee (Tarra Riggs). The man is paralyzed with depression and unable to communicate due to the death of his brother Darius who, as discovered by a neighbor John (Johnny McPhail), has died in his bed of a self-inflicted overdose. Sullenly, Lawrence responds to the tragedy by going outside and shooting himself in the lungs. Rushed to the hospital, he is badly wounded but recovers after several weeks in the hospital.

In trouble with dope dealers, young James keeps his working mother from discovering that he owes $100 for crack cocaine, but it is revealed when James' TV is taken by the gang and both mother and son are assaulted in their cars. James, who owns a scooter, rides to Lawrence's place and demands his father's money at gunpoint. Things seem to hit rock bottom when Marlee is fired from her job cleaning toilets and Lawrence, still in shock, is unable to reopen his small food market. With nowhere to go but up, the three begin a long process of discovery of their indelible connection to life and to each other.

Unfolding like a documentary, Ballast conveys a sense of immediacy and a lyricism that gathers momentum as the film progresses. Accents are difficult to fathom (the film wisely provides English subtitles), yet there is a naturalism and authenticity here that keeps us engaged throughout. While none of the actors have ever acted before, you would not know it from the power of their performances, especially from Tarra Riggs and young Ross. It is a film, however, that definitely requires patience from the viewer. There are no markers to tell us what we are supposed to feel about the people we see on the screen, yet we remain tuned in to their struggles as if they were our own and in many respects they are. As they discover that who they are is larger than their circumstances, we discover a similar truth in our own life.