Ballast begins with one self-inflected death, that of Lawrence’s brother Darius, and it might have been two if it weren’t for the kindly neighbour being nearby and calling in Lawrence’s suicide attempt, a gunshot to the chest that pierced his lung but failed to deliver him from this altogether bleak and newly lonesome rural Mississippi winter. Lawrence’s remaining behind after his brother’s death feels either a betrayal of some biological contract or the completion of some ruthless process of deterministic reduction. Lawrence and Darius, you see, were twins, and Darius, unamicably estranged from his wife and son, has left Lawrence alone and with much to resolve. So Ballast becomes a story of ambiguous responsibility, and forgiveness too, and, more subtly, identity asserting itself by force of fate.
The clouds hold rain and the people hold massive emotions, but the movie is, for the most part, rigorously unassuming. Writer/director/producer Lance Hammer’s valiantly self-distributed feature debut was a critical favourite at Sundance a year back, and, really, you have to figure that sheer austerity and the mere presentation of impoverished African-Americans had more than a little to do with that. The camera work, courtesy of Lol Crawley, is hand-held but shot on 35 mm, with a striking beauty to its expansive overcast landscapes and stark compositions. The rhythms are jarring and the jump cuts made even terser by the utter absence of any musical scoring. The talk is most often subdued, and at times the whispered mumbling is almost perversely obscure. This world of rattling trains and strip malls in the middle of nowhere, of wood paneling and track pants, of bottled-up despair and readily available guns, vividly evokes the lives of so many Americans that rarely make it into the movies. It all makes an impression, but I guess I just have to say that at times it also feels generic, like these characters and this approach are closer to elegantly selected tropes than to the unadorned reality that Hammer seems to be striving for.
Lawrence (Michael J. Smith Sr.) is but one third of Ballast’s centre. James (JimMyron Ross) is his nephew and Marlee (Tarra Riggs) his sister-in-law, that is, the family Darius left him with. They mightn’t have had any reason to communicate, much less reconcile, if it weren’t for James’ involvement in the local crack-peddling scene, thus the need for Lawrence’s gun, and Marlee’s discovery that Darius bequeathed to her his half of the house and convenience store business he shared with Lawrence. Neither party initially sees any opportunity in the inheritance, but economics and, one guesses, a lingering sense of familial duty, driven by desperation, will make picking up the pieces of the business and moving into the house seem more inviting than trying to sell everything off for what will surely be a pittance.
Of course the relationships I’ve just described are in some sense spoilers. Hammer lets us in on how these characters interconnect in a strictly piecemeal fashion—this is very much in keeping with the movie’s style and doesn’t feel needlessly withholding or gimmicky—but it’s difficult to say much about Ballast without setting these bare facts straight. So many things are broken or breaking at the onset of this story, and it is these points of connection between people that provides the only traces of hope. Yet it’s in these very connection points that Ballast reveals its limitations. Some of the moments shared by Lawrence and James resonate intensely, an effect only heightened by masculine codes of reserve and by the bracing emotional residue of Darius’ departure. Moments shared by either of these guys and Marlee however prove more problematic. Riggs gets stuck with the movie’s most awkward bits of dialogue. One scene finds her coming home after losing her job, nearly hysterical as she launches into a short monologue about how being black and poor renders her invisible in the work place. This scene is an especially strong example of how Ballast, for all its understated tone, can be both overly expository and didactic.
Am I coming down too hard on this handsome, well crafted and let’s say a little too earnest independent? My intention isn’t to bully the underdog but to simply acknowledge that the careful nurturing of a sensibility isn’t quite the same thing as actually telling a story in the most honest way. I was engaged in Ballast. It certainly looks like a movie I like. (Am I too suspicious of movies that look too tailored to me tastes?) But I also felt left outside of it, as though it were more a type than a specific thing. I encourage you to see it, and to disagree.
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