Dir. Lance Hammer, USA, 2008, 96 mins
Cast: Micheal J. Smith, Sr., Jimmyron Ross, Tarra Riggs, Johnny McPhail
Review by Kevin Gill
First-time independent directors often attempt to announce their arrival noisily, grabbing the attention of Sundance panels with snappy scripts, quirky narrative play or stylistic chutzpah. But Lance Hammer has rejected all of the above in the creation of his unassuming debut feature Ballast, which won deserved prizes for direction and cinematography at the film festival in 2008. Instead former visual effects man Hammer (whose credits in that capacity include Batman Forever and Practical Magic) has used all the tools in the neo-realist’s handbook – non-professional actors, real locations, a loose script, an on-the-fly 35mm camera and a purely diegetic soundtrack – to conjure a quietly captivating and poignant drama. His film achieves the remarkable feat of appearing to present real life. And this life is lived by three emotionally and economically impoverished people in a small Mississippi Delta township.
Personifying the film’s reticence is grocery store keeper Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith, Sr.). He spends much of the film with the air of a man who has nothing to live for, as he struggles to come to terms with the suicide of his twin brother Darius. We first see Lawrence in the immediate aftermath of his brother’s overdose, sitting silently in the darkness of his dead sibling’s living room – he doesn’t get much more animated throughout the film. After a concerned neighbour visits and discovers Darius’s body, Lawrence returns to his own home – an identical bungalow on the same plot of land – and shoots himself in the chest.
Fittingly this opening burst of violence takes place off screen – as it is not the act itself but the consequences of the failed suicide attempt that interest Hammer. The story slips into an engrossing rhythm after Lawrence’s return home from hospital. He receives visits, alternately, from his kind neighbour John (Johnny McPhail) and his nephew James (Jimmyron Ross). The former offers to look after Lawrence’s dog and invites his neighbour to dinner. The latter, perhaps reacting to his estranged father’s death and unconsciously attempting to reconnect with his uncle, robs pocket change from Lawrence with Lawrence’s gun, which he has stolen during the wounded man’s convalescence.
Ironically for a film that makes so little spectacle of violence (or, indeed, of anything else), the gun continues to play a major role in propelling the narrative forward. When the action switches to James’s home life with his overworked, underpaid mother Marlee (Tarra Riggs), we see the boy using the firearm to fend off a gang of teenage drug dealers. When Lawrence recovers the gun and James is left defenceless, mother and son are forced to flee their home and seek refuge in the empty bungalow that belonged to James’s father.
If the stage is set for re-opening of old wounds, outpourings of repressed emotion and dramatic gestures of reconciliation, Hammer and his determinedly naturalistic cast are having none of it. Instead, the director’s camera simply observes the three characters – individually and collectively – as they attempt to come to terms with the new living arrangements and find a way to move their lives forward.
It helps Hammer’s objective cause that both adults are decent people. Despite their contrasting feelings for the deceased Darius (Lawrence explains that Marlee “will never know the depth my love for him” in a rare moment of articulacy) and their mutual bitterness fuelled by past events, Marlee and Lawrence find common ground in focusing on James’s welfare and education. And although James is in desperate need of a father figure and Lawrence needs a compelling reason to keep on living, an unmistakeable atmosphere of emotional limbo – aided by Director of Photography Lol Crawley’s exquisite backgrounds and linking shots of a barren and brutal winter landscape – pervades throughout.
Hammer reintroduces the gun for the film’s denouement – but in a final act of defiance against drama with a capital D, the revolver’s empty chambers make a poignant and progressive emotional statement. Here the director demonstrates that formal choices are one thing, but successful cinematic realism tends to hinge on one elusive quality: masterful storytelling.
