Love-hate relationship
Much is being said about Halle Berry’s performance in Monster’s Ball, and the praise is appropriate. Her work, and strong turns by Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger and Sean Combs, makes this film a strong depiction of hate’s ability to destroy and love’s ability to resurrect.
Berry plays Laticia, a waitress who has a bad husband (Sean Combs) sitting on death row and an obese child who stuffs his face with candy bars despite her vicious, violent outbursts at him for doing so. Berry portrays Laticia with a sadness that sucks you in and startles you with the passion and anger that is brewing under that quiet exterior.
Working as an officer on death row and training his son, Sonny (Heath Ledger), about the proper steps in executing a man, Thornton is remarkable as Hank, a man with inbred racial hatred that can partially be blamed on a reprehensible father (Peter Boyle, making you forget his goofy dad character on TV’s Everybody Loves Raymond). Hank treats his son horribly, threatens his African-American neighbors with a shotgun and stiffs Berry, a black woman, on a tip at her restaurant. A lifetime with Hank’s father, now ill and living in his home, has taken its toll.
When Laticia’s husband is given his final meal before execution, it is Hank and his son who deliver it, and they spend the final hours of his life keeping him company as he nervously sketches their portraits. When Sonny has difficulty performing the rituals of the execution, Hank hatefully and publicly berates him.
Major tragedies unfold, heavily influencing the trajectory of both Laticia’s and Hank’s lives and, through a set of coincidental circumstances, bringing them together. Their relationship is not based at first on love, but need, and their first sexual encounter is shockingly primal for commercial film fare. Things progress into something sweeter as the characters get to know one another, with Thornton and Berry making that transition moving and believable.
There are obstacles. Berry is not aware that Thornton is the man who escorted her husband to the electric chair, and furthermore, she is not aware of his racist ways. She is introduced to the hatred that surrounds Hank while attempting to deliver a gift to his house, accidentally encountering his father. It is here that Boyle pulls off a scene of overwhelming and all-too-real evil.
The way the film chooses to resolve the dilemmas is interesting in that the ending leaves us feeling uncertain about the couple’s future together. Director Marc Forster does not choose the popular approach of happy endings and resolutions, but settles for something more ambiguous. We are left wondering whether the couple will be able to heal and live a happy life together.
A definite sense of dread pervades in that we aren’t too sure the Hank character deserves the kind of happiness that Laticia could provide. Additionally, we have doubts that Laticia will be able to overcome her adversities and pain to lead a normal life. The film leaves you with a slight sense of optimism, but it isn’t the audience-friendly, fantasy-type optimism of garbage movies like I Am Sam. Hank and Laticia have a chance at a better life, but so much needs to happen for that to be accomplished.
While Monster’s Ball is in some ways about redemption, it also clearly states that hate is a crime that can take your life away, even if you are still breathing. Hank and Laticia end the film on emotional life support, helping each other to survive after so many terrible mistakes.