Le bal du monstre

This movie is outstanding and one of the best dramas i've ever seen.

Some might ask why, because there seems to be nothing really happening at all during the whole movie. Some say the plot is predictable and flat, and the characters too. In my opinion this is just not true. Try to tell the story in one or two lines. Most of the movies can be told in just a short summary, but this does not work for "Monster's Ball" at all. E.g. : "A prison guard falls in love with the wife of a prisoner he just executed". This is a simple tagline, but if you think of what could have happened to this basic plot with other directors, actors or script writers, the feeling of the movie goes in ten thousand different directions. But none of them matches this version. And this is, what makes "Monster's Ball" extremely outstanding.

This movie offers so many different plotlines, questions, and in-depth-characters you simply cannot describe the feeling of the movie and what is really happening here without telling every little bit of it. Yes, it's sad, and it's depressing, and it gives absolutely no answer to any problem at all (which we basically all want, while watching a movie). But in the end, despite all the drama, it's full of warmth and hope. And this is what it's all about. Just after the credits begin to appear, you sit there and think - about anything.

Technically "Monster's Ball" is nearly perfect. There is not a single scene, which could be missed and everything is at it's right place. The excellent music goes with well played characters and the timing makes the whole athmosphere so intense you cannot escape and switch off, even if you know that there will be no "great solution" at all. Some might say it's boring, and yes, you're right - but in this case "Monster's Ball" is simply not the movie you expected.

This one plays with anything we expect from a drama, and this is why most of the other dramas fail and "Monster's Ball" works. Other "so called drama" try to give us solutions, great feelings, great moments in life, and all the other rubbish. But "Monster's Ball" is so slow and intense and ignores all of the standard "drama issues" you have to think for yourselve what this is all about.

For me it's about love, hate, hope, racism, father-son/mother-son relationships, escaping from your past life, death, depressions, failures and many other things. Everything is shown and nothing is really explained. Just like life basically is - full of complex problems we create for ourselves. Some of them can be solved in one or another way, most of them we just ignore, and life still goes on, because we are able to exist with a whole universe of lies around us.

This is the kind of gritty, fuzz-free reality drama that keeps you musing about it long past the ending credits. It is unsparing in its depiction of all the light and dark sides of the human psyche, from racism to passion to insularity and even corpulence, mounting these on a platform so stark and unambiguous that the audience is not left with many choices - the reactions evoked are exactly the ones intended to be evoked, oscillating between disgust, outrage, sympathy, tenderness and occasionally, even a surreptitious smile.

Most of the characters in the movie suffer somewhat from a lack of complexity, which is compensated for by casting them into circumstantial conflict to create the dramatic tension (a husband is electrocuted, a child dies, another child sends a bullet through his heart and into the couch behind, and so on). This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially because the remarkable performances (particularly from Halle Berry) validate this ploy. The exception to this, however, is the character of Hank Grotowski, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob succeeds in imparting a subtle gray shade to this seemingly cardboard-cutout poster-boy-for-the-old-bigoted-south character that makes you hesitate from accepting him at face value. Is this simply about a saturnine, jaded racist being transformed by true love? Well, yes, that's part of it - the obvious part. But something keeps nagging you, preventing you from accepting this linear, justifiable inference, making you want to probe deeper, discover the reasons he has turned out this way, and even, in a perverse way, rationalize them. Is it just the provincial social climate? Is it the long proximity to his bigoted dotard of a father (played admirably by Peter Boyle)? Is he really that way or is he simply going with the flow? No simple explanation seems satisfactory - and the credit for this questioning, this need for deconstruction, goes to Billy Bob's nuanced performance.

All in all, beside the fact that some of the scenes may unsettle the squeamish, and that some promising characters like that of Grotowski's dispirited, conflicted son Sonny (played by Heath Ledger) were knocked off too early, the picture satisfies most norms for a good cinema experience - it makes you think, weep, squirm, analyze, rationalize, everything but walk out before it is over. In other words, it is what good cinema is about.

This movie was not a big favorite with audiences and I figured I would be among the majority on this one......but I wasn't - I like this film. In fact, I liked it even better on the second viewing.

I found it to be one of those rare movies that deals with racism that doesn't come on too heavy-handed with all the political correctness nonsense. It handled the problem intelligently, I thought.

The cinematographer, Robert Schaefer, did a terrific job with this, too, and that is another reason I have come to really enjoy this film. The visuals - and the audio - are outstanding.

None of the characters are particularly likable but I thought Billy Bob Thornton's "Hank Grotowski" was so interesting a character that I concentrated more on that than whether I liked him or not. However, I wound up liking him, anyway, and boy, did his character change in this film. There is a steamy sex scene in here with Billy Bob and Halle Barry that was quite the talk when the film was released. I didn't think it was all that it was made out to be. I've seen steamier moments such as Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger going at it in the non-rated version of "The Getaway."

Overall, this a rough film in spots but I think it is a solid, underrated drama that offers far more than the "celebrated" sex scene. This is a well-made movie.

After a series of hardships Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) finds himself alone in the world, with his only son committing suicide and his ever-nagging father always riding him about every little thing. Hank is a prison guard that works on death row at a maximum-security prison where his son was also a guard. While at one of his favorite diners, he comes across a waitress whose luck is no better than his own. Leticia (Halle Berry) has also recently had to deal with the death of her husband who was on Hank's watch on death row. Leticia's son passed away shortly after his father when a car hit him as he was walking home from the diner with his mom. Hank helps her out the night he died and they form an emotional relationship. Director Mark Forster did a wonderful job showing us how in every situation some good can come out and to never give up when it seems all is lost. The character choice was great, Billy Bob Thornton is a passionate actor along with Halle Berry's flare. Tragedies like these happen every day and it was good to see some of the struggles each character faced and the positive that came from this. Monster's Ball had little suspense but all of the tragedy made up for that. Seeing outside of the box is what made this movie so interesting. Hank's father was racist toward the African American race which made the plot a little more suspenseful. The interest that I had in this movie was that it showed a person's will to move on even after a life shattering experience. The story line was catchy but for me the movie started off kind of slow. Once the plot got going, it seemed to hold me in my seat and I didn't find myself wanting to leave the room. All in all, this was a good movie. I wouldn't have given it a five out of five stars, but it earned a firm three. With this, I would definitely watch this movie again.

Take away the wrapping, remove the box and see what's really inside. A powerful drama with a strong message. Superbly acted, well scripted and directed with excellent cinematography. To delve into the plot would ruin it. Just watch it.