"Unique
and unforgettable"
ROLLING STONE
MONSTER'S BALL
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Milo Addica Will Rokos
ACADEMY AWARD WINNER - BEST ACTRESS 2001: HALLE BERRY
"In England they used to give the condemned man a 'party' the night before…called it the Monster's Ball. We owe it to him. I don't care what he done. We got to make the last hours as easy as possible for him." Hank Grotowski
Monster's Ball is about intersecting lives in which the characters have the
chance to transform one another. It shows us three generations of Corrections
Officers who work on death Row, readying the condemned for execution. Buck (Peter
Boyle, Young Frankenstein, The Dream Team) is an aging homebound patriarch whose
racism has not dimmed with age. His son Hank (Billy Bob Thornton, Slingblade,
The Man Who Wasn't There) has followed in his father's footsteps and now heads
the death squad. Hank's son Sonny (Heath Ledger, 10 Things I Hate About You;
A Knight's Tale) seems far less comfortable with his role, and with the legacy
of hate that has been passed down from father to son.
The condemned prisoner is murderer Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs), who has been
visited on death row for eleven years by his wife Leticia (Halle Berry, X-Men,
Swordfish). While she lives daily with the pressure this places upon herself
and her young son, Hank, Sonny and Buck are equally trapped by the weight of
the past, which sours and warps their relationship. The execution of Musgrove
begins a sequence of shifts that, whether good or bad, will break the stalemate.
Monsters' Ball was shot over five hot, humid weeks in May and June on the
outskirts and in the neighbourhoods of New Orleans. The production moved two
hours away, to the fields, cellblocks and death house of Louisiana's State Penitentiary
at Angola for one week to shoot prison interiors and exteriors. The location
was a trying experience for the cast and crew; the tremendous heat broke, but
the torrential rains of a tropical storm broke it, and the crew barely got their
exterior shots in a single afternoon of calm weather.
For Forster, those shots - depicting rows of chained prisoners off to work in
the fields, guarded by mounted officers with shotguns - were essential to the
narrative and to indicating the transformation in Hank's outlook following his
family tragedy.
"Those sequences are taken from Hank's point of view as he drives to his
place of work. I made a point never to show Hank outside his job, in an exterior
establishing shot or something like that, until you see his car, because he
is captured, caught in that prison and in that life, without even really knowing
it."
But the prison interiors were truly harrowing to shoot, since some scenes were
photographed in the Prison's actual death chamber. Some crewmembers dealt with
their surroundings by making jokes; others felt deeply moved and disturbed.
For screenwriter Milo Addica, playing a guard on the death team, the reality
of the place hit him when he noticed someone's initials carved into the wood
of the electric chair. Forster is convinced that the location had an impact
on the performances.
"It is impossible for a human being to walk down death row and look into
people's eyes and not be moved. You feel the vibe. It's palpable. Anyone can
associate with that feeling of dread. The hallways where we were shooting were
tiny, so the actors and crew were often cramped. There was literally no escape."
Additionally, the cast and crew stayed at Best Western motel during the Angola
portion of the shoot. The only place to stay for miles around, it was also the
place where people from out of town visiting prisoners at Angola stayed.
Shooting at the Prison was made possible by the Warden, Burl Cain, who not only
granted the production access, but also allowed for inmates to be hired as extras.
The fees paid for this work went to the Inmate Welfare Fund, a pool of money
that provides for such shared goods as new television sets in common areas.
Marc Forster was born in Germany and raised in Switzerland. In 1990 after completing his Swiss Maturity degree, he moved to New York and studied film at NYU, graduating in 1993. He stayed in New York to complete two documentary films for European television: Silent Windows, an intimate look at teen age suicide, and Our Story, a touching exploration of the lives of child burn victims. Then Forster was offered the opportunity to direct Loungers, which was completed in 1996 and won the Slamdance Audience Award. Shortly after, he began collaboratively writing and set out to direct Everything Put Together, which premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival in the dramatic competition and earned him the Movado Someone to Watch/Independent Spirit Award.
"I wasn't sure how
I felt about Monster's Ball when I came out of an early screening last month.
The film's conclusion baffled me in a way that was completely unexpected. And
yet, I find that the story and characters remained quite vivid in my mind. I
keep reliving their experiences and continue to find them fascinating.
I'm now recommending Monster's Ball with the caveat that it's already been overrated
by reviewers and award presentations. Roger Ebert has named it the best film
of 2001 - which it's not."
Jeffrey M. Anderson, The Examiner
"Despite the occasionally facile portraiture of screenwriters Milo Addica
and Will Rokos, the project is well redeemed by its dank atmosphere and cracker-barrel
performances."
Gregory Weinkauf, New Times Los Angeles.
"Monster's Ball is
a serious movie made by seriously talented people, and I never quite cane round
to it. Part of the problem is that it throws so much tragedy at you in its first
half, you figure this is one of those Southern Gothic tales where a body's going
to drop every 15 minutes. I won't say I was disappointed when the death tally
ended, but it took me too long to realise I was supposed to take the surviving
characters' emotions at face value instead of anticipating the next blow."
Marc Caro, Metromi
"On paper, Monster's
Ball sounds like pure Southern Gothic with a bad dose of the vapours. In addition
to the misfortunes of Leticia, tragic incidents accumulate, like stirred-up
silt, as the story unfolds…The Academy voters were more than likely swayed
to award the Oscar for Best Actress to Halle Berry by the last undeniably moving
scene as anything else in the film, although her acting in the now infamous
semi-improvised (slightly trimmed in the U.S.) sex scene with Billy Bob Thornton
as Hank is equally deserving. Few actresses in the porn industry or elsewhere
have simulated orgasm so well, but more importantly, it's one of those rare
instances where a sex scene really is integral to the plot, even where the postures
chosen enhance our understanding of the characters."
Leslie Felperin, SIGHT AND SOUND
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