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Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton
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Halle Berry is an "It" girl, someone so stunningly beautiful that it's impossible not to watch her. As an actress, Berry's body of work is less compelling. Dramatic performances in the cable TV biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and the Spike Lee drama Jungle Fever are overwhelmed by fluff like Swordfish, a forgettable actioner, and The Flintstones, a live-action cartoon. Berry's cachet is her looks, and without them, like many big-screen Aphrodites, she ceases to be interesting.
Watching her gritty performance in the stark drama Monster's Ball changes everything. Berry throws stylish hairstyles, makeup and fashionable wardrobes out the window. As Leticia Musgrove, a Southern widow who falls for the death-row prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton) who executed her convicted-killer husband (Rapper Sean Combs), Berry looks intentionally drab.
Stripped of her Cover Girl looks, Berry comes off as complex and intense. I don't know how Berry's Monster's Ball performance will fare in the Oscar race. I do know that she's deserving of the Best Actress Award itself. Berry's performance is the best thing about director Marc Forster's Monster's Ball, a powerful and intelligent melodrama. She's intense, which is something I've never said about her before.
Berry is getting the lion's share of attention for Monster's Ball because she's offering something we really haven't seen from her. For Thornton, who plays Georgia Corrections Officer Hank Grotowski, Monster's Ball is business as usual. Hank is an angry man made believable and complex by Thornton's emotional subtleties. In Monster's Ball, Thornton's faraway gaze becomes his best attribute. Solemn and deliberately told, Monster's Ball is the type of quiet drama that suits Thornton best. I've enjoyed everything Thornton has done recently, from his twitchy bank robber in Bandits to his soft-spoken barber in The Man Who Wasn't There. Still, Monster's Ball shows an angry side of Thornton that's genuinely surprising. Hank is also a broken man, surrounded by a disturbed son (Heath Ledger) and an extremely racist father (Peter Boyle). When Leticia tries to bring some compassion into Hank's life, it's unclear whether he's capable of loving her in return.
Monster's Ball is a love story, although it's too gritty to be described simply as a movie romance. Forster focuses Monster's Ball on race, telling its story in a deliberately black-and-white manner. For Hank, the color of Leticia's skin means everything initially. His challenge is to overcome a lifetime of bigotry. For the film's audiences, the challenge is to connect with Thornton's unlikable character and believe in his ability to transform.
On the surface, Leticia is not any more lovable. The plight of her husband has turned her bitter towards the world. She verbally abuses her obese son, Tyrell (first-time actor Coronji Calhoun), with drunken tirades. Like Hank, Leticia is also a broken-down person. It's hard to imagine how they could help each other. Then again, Monster's Ball's sliver of optimism revolves around the fact that Leticia and Hank were capable of getting together in the first place.
A raw love scene between Thornton and Berry's characters is receiving plenty of attention, but there is more to Monster's Ball than its explicit sex. Personally, my favorite scenes are when Hank first meets Leticia as she serves tables at a local diner. Berry looks sullen in her starched waitress uniform. It's clear she's the type of server who will spit in a customer's food at a moment's notice. Thornton's Hank circles Leticia with the shyness of a timid schoolboy. You'd think he had never spent time around a woman before. The truth of the matter is that he hasn't in years.
Monster's Ball looks terrific; boasting lingering camera shots that turn its rural Southern locale into a third lead character. While Monster's Ball is a performance-driven movie, Forster deserves credit for keeping the storytelling taut and engaging. The film does not portray small-town Southern life in an idealized, Andy Griffith manner. At the same time, Hank and his racist father are not portrayed as typical Southern rubes. They are bigots, but their bigotry is shown as a complex, emotional scar that runs deep inside their family psyche. Hank's life is believable and disturbed. The dysfunction that's at the heart of Hank's failed relationship with his son is powerful and unforgiving. Early in Monster's Ball, the condition of Hank's life is bleak. The film's dramatic pull occurs around Hank's struggle to become a better man.
Director Forster is a filmmaking newcomer, but you wouldn't know that from the beautiful look of Monster's Ball. His previous film, Everything Put Together, an equally dark drama about an affluent couple dealing with the loss of a child, was a critical hit at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
By telling another tale about human frailty, Monster's Ball shows Forster's knack for challenging material. While a movie like Monster's Ball is considered low-budget, its performances outshine most of this year's large-scale movies. Ledger makes the most of his brief scenes as Thornton's troubled son, Sonny. Combs puts a compassionate face on Leticia's death-row husband. Boyle brings a menacing spirit to the film as Hank's racist father. Thornton's powerful performance is the emotional thread that connects all these characters together. Still, by Monster's Ball quiet climax, it's clear that Berry is the soul of Forster's picture.
After watching Monster's Ball, I no longer think of Berry as a former beauty queen or Pepsi spokesperson. Her topless scene in last summer's Swordfish seems like a long-ago fluke. Monster's Ball has turned Halle Berry the cover girl into Halle Berry the actress. Her stellar 1999 performance as Dorothy Dandridge was a taste of things to come.
Looking ahead, there is little doubt that Thornton will continue to become one of American film's great male actors. For Berry, the prospects are less certain. She returns to fluff, playing the comic-book hero Storm in the X-Men sequel and the lead Bond girl in the next James Bond adventure. The big question is: What will Berry do after those two films? After Monster's Ball, it won't have to be just another pretty woman.
CITYBEAT GRADE: A
