Every year some over-hyped award-laden independent film faces a critical backlash, dissenting writers who cry it ain’t all that. This year it’s Ballast. To quote Armond White, from the NY Press:
“Director-writer Lance Hammer shows a black Mississippi family torn apart by a double suicide attempt, drugs and alienation. But you have to see through these ludicrous black phantoms to the actual white middle-class fantasies at the film’s core.”
Maybe “backlash” is a strong term for a handful of disgruntled critics, but I detect a similar sense of unrest in the audience.
The second time I saw Ballast, I dragged a friend along to Manhattan’s Film Forum (where it recently closed after a brief run). I told her that this film was everything I had been arguing for in American cinema (mostly on internet message boards, in my drawers—sad, really): Its angelic patience, its reverence for faces, silences and subjective experience (with more watchful over-the-shoulder shots than a ‘Nam combat doc) could teach American audiences how to look and listen again. Second time around, I was able to appreciate these qualities even more, as the story became fairly transparent, cleverly delineated though it was. Second time around, it was all about the beauty.
I suspect it was the story that had some of the folks in the Film Forum audience sighing, whispering and even snickering uncontrollably. Story-wise, Ballast can be easily mistaken for an entry in the Why We Be Black genre—films which depict underclass African-Americans scratching and surviving and tearing each other apart. Such films are said to exist mainly for the delectation of white liberals who like to think of poor blacks as lovable to the degree that they are irrational, impulsive and self-destructive. Mighty Joe Young in a do-rag. The fallacy of placing Ballast in this genre is as tragic as the critical backlash against Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple adaptation, which reduced that film’s towering humanism to Song of the South T-N-T.
Funny how, in the indie film world, falls from grace tend to begin before you’ve even hit the top. Yesterday, Lance Hammer’s Ballast was nominated for four Gotham Independent Film Awards — the most of any single film — including Breakthrough Director and Best Picture. Meanwhile, the critical darling is, for maybe the first time since its Sundance premiere, provoking sour responses. Armond White wrote a scathing review of the film attacking it as evidence that “African-American life is imprisoned by the art fallacies of Indie filmmaking, controlled by white liberal condescension” — but he’s Armond White, so that was somewhat expected. Somewhat less expected was this Hollywood Elsewhere post, where Jeff Wells pounces on White’s review like it’s the smoking yellow cake that makes the case that Ballast is overrated.
Last weekend, I stumbled home from seeing Ballast at New York’s Film Forum, stunned at its contemplative regard for human-sized people working out their human-sized problems. Gorgeous. Some great films leave you a staggering drunk; Ballast is one of those greats that leave you hobbled but stone sober, lucid, hearing through walls. So when I plopped down on my bunk that night, you can imagine how rattled I was to hear Dennis Quaid getting keelhauled by automobile across a strip mall. That’s what it sounded like, anyway. There were about fifteen minutes of squalling tires, shrieks, Mr. Quaid growling incomprehensible orders, glass shattering, curses in several languages, metallic sobbing/slapping/ripping noises.
The ruckus was coming from the next bed, from Salaam’s portable DVD player. He was half-awake, his leg dangling from the top bunk, head nodding then springing up at the more violent eruptions. I said, “Yo, Salaam, what’s that you watching, Innerspace?” Salaam perked up. “Nah. What the fuck is Innerspace?”
“Dennis Quaid shrinks down and goes inside Rick Moranis—no, Martin Short.”
“Goes inside—what? You be watching some weird shit, man. Nah, this is Vantage Point.”
This review originally appeared during the Sundance Film Festival. Ballast opens in New York today.
Ballast is the kind of movie that I’m predisposed to enjoy––a slow, score-free and sometimes actually silent character study, offering the chance to spend some time watching real-ish people floating in and out of a crisis point, demanding that we engage by refusing to pander for that engagement––and yet its wonders still crept up on me. But falling for a movie is like falling for anything, I guess; you don’t really know it’s happening until the undeniable gut punch.
For me, that moment came about two thirds of the way through Ballast, with a shot of a young boy lying on the floor, listening to adults speak off camera while absentmindedly stroking the belly of a giant dog. Like every shot in Lance Hammer’s feature directorial debut, it’s dead simple but beautifully composed, and it gets you by playing hard to get.
I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:
Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light is finally, finally coming back to New York, a year after it screened at NYFF 2007, as part of a retrospective dedicated to the Mexican filmmaker at MoMA. Manohla Dargis raves.
Natural Causes, the relationship drama co-directed by sometime SpoutBlog contributor Michael Lerman (and featuring yours truly in a teeny-tiny cameo), has a one-night-only NYC preview on Monday night at the IFC Center. You can buy tickets here, and read our SXSW coverage of the film here and here.
IFP is launching a new series of screenings called First Weekend, in which they help ensure an indie release has a successful first weekend by inviting their members to buy tickets for a special screening featuring a discussion with the filmmakers and an after party. The first film to get the treatment will be Ballast, which we loved at Sundance, and which director Lance Hammer is self-distributing. It all starts at Film Forum on October 2. More info here.
New Directors/New Films, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Spring retrospective of hits, overlooked gems and conversation starters from the recent festival circuit, opens tomorrow night with Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Frozen River. I won’t be covering the series extensively this year, partially because I was in Austin when the press screenings started and partially because we’ve already covered several of the films on the schedule at previous festivals. For full coverage, I’d recommend Slant Magazine; I imagine we’ll see some stuff from our friends at The House Next Door as well. After the jump, you’ll find a look at some of the films on the schedule that we’ve had previous encounters with.
IFC has acquired Ballast for day-and-date release in a deal apparently worth “a six-figures…plus gross participation and a real P&A commitment.” Lance Hammer’s excellent drama premiered last month at Sundance; see my review here and Kevin’s interview with Hammer and the film’s cast here.
Diane Garrett says reporters at yesterday’s Oscar nominee’s luncheon tried to keep the conversation light––what are you wearing, etc––but stars like Viggo Mortensen, George Clooney and Michael Moore kept returning to the issue of the writers strike. Everyone agreed that unless the strike is full resolved by Oscar night, AMPAS can throw whatever kind of alternate event they like, but not a single SAG or WGA member will show up.
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has hired two former ThinkFilm employees, David Fenkel and Dan Berger, to help him start a “a full-service film distribution company” called Oscilloscope Pictures. Fenkel’s summing up of the curation strategy: “We do the films we want to do.”
People may be going home and some may have already filed their festival recaps, but Sundance isn’t over yet. I’ve pretty much run out of real trailers to look at, though. There are technically some out there that I haven’t reviewed, but they’re for movies I really haven’t felt that inclined to highlight. So, on my last day of writing about the (disappointing) marketing of Sundance films, I’m taking a look at two of Sundance Channel’s “Meet the Filmmaker” videos, which kind of serve as unofficial trailers to the two films I’ve become most excited about.
The first (above) is for Ballast, which Karina has reviewed. I don’t know if it is her favorite dramatic film of the fest, but she and others have written favorably enough about it that I’m hoping to somehow see it in the “real world”. The little bit of footage doesn’t give us much and director Lance Hammer’s description is also not the best sell, but it hardly matters. This is one film that has garnered my attention through its reception, and so it’s best to leave it to the buzz to get us to see it. Unfortunately, the last scheduled Sundance screening for Ballast was this morning, but if it finds any awards success, it will receive more showtimes this weekend. Otherwise, we non-festival attendees will have to hope for at least some minor theatrical distributor to pick it up. For more of Spout’s coverage of this film, check out our interview with Hammer and the cast.
Lance Hammer’s debut feature Ballast is garnering positive feedback here at Sundance (see Karina’s full review here). The film is a carefully paced drama about suicide, youth, and the emotional successes and failures that bind people together. Hammer’s influence was his setting, the Mississippi Delta. He cast only local actors, most of them with no professional experience. In this interview Hammer and stars Micheal Smith, Tarra Riggs and Johnny McPhail talk about working without a script, the bonds formed on set, and why throwing away the script is the first step toward truth in film.
Ballast is the kind of movie that I’m predisposed to enjoy––a slow, score-free and sometimes actually silent character study, offering the chance to spend some time watching real-ish people floating in and out of a crisis point, demanding that we engage by refusing to pander for that engagement––and yet its wonders still crept up on me. But falling for a movie is like falling for anything, I guess; you don’t really know it’s happening until the undeniable gut punch. For me, that moment came about two thirds of the way through Ballast, with a shot of a young boy lying on the floor, listening to adults speak off camera while absentmindedly stroking the belly of a giant dog. Like every shot in Lance Hammer’s feature directorial debut, it’s dead simple but beautifully composed, and it gets you by playing hard to get.
We’ve made several updates to our Sundance 2008 Deal chart over the past 24 hours. The most significant news is that the Weinsteins have acquired the doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired for theatrical distribution in every territory *except* for the U.S. and Canada. I saw the film this morning and will have more to say about it later today, but suffice it to say for now that the film casts a very, um, “European” eye on Polanski’s child rape scandal, poking quite a bit of fun at American attitudes towards sex and media and, especially, our justice system.
Also of note: United Artists has bought the remake rights to Timecrimes, a Spanish sci-fi film premiering here before hitting theaters under the auspices of Magnolia, as well as the excuse for a raging karaoke party in Park City last night (anything you may have heard about your blogger’s Fred Schneider impression has been grossly exaggerated.) Finally, Celluloid Dreams has signed a deal to rep Lance Hammer’s Ballast for international sale. I hope to see Ballast later today–it wasn’t on my original schedule, but after a colleague described it as “The Dardennes on the Mississippi Delta,” I’m intrigued.
Check out the full list of Sundance 2008 deals here.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
Funny how, in the indie film world, falls from grace tend to begin before you’ve even hit the top. Yesterday, Lance Hammer’s Ballast was nominated for four Gotham Independent Film Awards — the most of any single film — including Breakthrough Director and Best Picture. Meanwhile, the critical darling is, for maybe the first time since its Sundance premiere, provoking sour responses. Armond White wrote a scathing review of the film attacking it as evidence that “African-American life is imprisoned by the art fallacies of Indie filmmaking, controlled by white liberal condescension” — but he’s Armond White, so that was somewhat expected. Somewhat less expected was this Hollywood Elsewhere post, where Jeff Wells pounces on White’s review like it’s the smoking yellow cake that makes the case that Ballast is overrated.
New Directors/New Films
We’ve made several updates to our 
