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Ballast
Alluvial Film Co.


8.0

based on 24 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Micheal J. Smith Sr., Jim Myron Ross, Tarra Riggs, and Johnny McPhail

In the cold, winter light of a rural Mississippi Delta township, a man’s suicide radically transforms three characters’ lives and throws off-balance what has long been a static arrangement among them. Marlee is a single mother struggling to scratch a living for herself and James, her 12-year-old son, who has begun to stumble under drug and violence pressures. So when the opportunity to seek safe harbor at a new home arises, she grabs it, though the property is shared by Lawrence, a man with whom Marlee has feuded bitterly since James’s birth. With circumstances thrusting them into proximity, a subtle interdependence and common purpose emerge for Marlee and Lawrence as they navigate grief, test new waters, and tentatively move forward. (Alluvial Film Company)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Lance Hammer
DIRECTED BY:	Lance Hammer
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: October 1, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	96 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Variety Robert Koehler

A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Ballast strikes me as one of the few American pictures of 2008 to say what it wants to say, visually and narratively, about a specific situation and part of the country, in a way that transcends regional specifics.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Ballast inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us. I always say I hardly ever cry at sad films, but I sometimes do, just a little, at films about good people.

100

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This is the most significant feature about poor black life since Charles Burnett's 1977 "Killer of Sheep."

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The final shot, of the three characters now united, may be the quietest affirmation of life I've ever seen in a movie, and one of the truest.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Shot with a sure hand and a cast of unknowns, the film doesn't so much tell a story as develop a tone and root around a place that, despite the intimate camerawork, remains shrouded in ambiguity.

Village Voice Elena Oumano

The conflicts, truths, and, ultimately, grace and dignity that bind these three together are brought to authentic life, without Hollywood-style exaggeration, through the quiet little miracles of performance that Hammer coaxes from his non-actors, especially the heartrending Riggs.

Film Threat Jeremy C. Fox

What they produced is something that is true not just to this place or to these people's lives, or to the lives of poor people or black people, but to the experience of being human.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Working with non-pro actors, Hammer pulls authentic performances from the trio that are at times almost too painful to witness.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A quintessentially American story that unmistakably echoes European art house cinema, combining the aesthetic purity of France's Robert Bresson with the social consciousness of Belgium's Dardenne brothers. It also is a powerful, character-driven melodrama that easily holds our attention from first to last.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Hammer overplays his indie hand with an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending, but his three leads are so credible that their aching, tongue-tied characters linger in the memory.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's a frustrating film in that its characters resolutely defy convention, and its story offers no epiphany, no one moment when everything becomes clear.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Hammer filmed on location with local nonactors. Their lack of polish is evident -- Smith's inexpressiveness, though part of his character, is simply blank at times -- but their conviction can be just as powerful.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

This ostensibly simple film evokes whole lives in 96 minutes, and does so with sparse dialogue.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Ballast is an audacious and ambiguous debut from a filmmaker whose motives and aims are not as transparent as they seem.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Hammer, whose blunt name belies the movie's many subtle touches, has his own distinct style. He also has an enormous trust in the audience to sort out this wounded family's miseries without the assistance of narration or even a musical score.

Premiere Eric Kohn

The result is an exhilarating narrative.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

Truly a winter's tale.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

What this unclassifiable story may lack in decibels, it has in emotional depth. At once a mystery, a family drama, a snapshot of children at risk, Ballast is an unusually perceptive character study more eloquent in action than in dialogue.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Plot isn't what drives the picture; instead, this is a cinematic tone poem, where the dominant mood is a Faulknerian mix of sorrow and endurance.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The overall thrust of the story -- that downtrodden folks in desperate circumstances have the capacity for goodness -- is one too rarely seen.

Washington Post Mike Mayo

Ballast, though, is less than completely satisfying in a dramatic sense. Events that seem to be important are dropped and left unresolved. Conflicts from the past are mentioned but never explained, as if key scenes were missing. Given that disinterest in conventional narrative techniques, the abrupt ending may be appropriate, but it feels wrong and arbitrary.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Hammer has a nice eye, and his premise develops engagingly in the final half hour, as he raises provocative questions about whether one man can truly step in for another.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Ballast lacks ballast. Much praised by aficionados of minimalist indie cinema – hey, who needs a plot when you've got mood? – it's a wearying slog through anomie in a Mississippi Delta township.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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Ballast Alluvial Film Co.

Ballast
Alluvial Film Co.