The Story behind the Monsters Ball - Essay Example

MONSTER’S BALL Monster’s Ball is the highly acclaimed and Oscar winner film of 2001. The apparent theme of the movie is racism, hatred, communicationgap, career failure, loneliness, and family problem. It is a dark and loud story about sinfulness, recklessness, killing, racial hates. It is a story where mother beats her son; father and son go to the prostitute in search of satisfaction, the alcoholic lovers fall in hasty sex. The relationship of the characters among themselves is conditional. They are in relationship because they need it for keeping solace and comfort in their lives. The strong point of the movie is its powerful and well crafted story. The basic attributes of the narrative of this film are miserable patriarch approach accompanied with racism, a strong hatred for women, violence, depression, frustration, victim, and the loneliness of each character. It is a dark movie in which the negative shades of human personality are prevalent. The story happens in a rural area of United States. The events of the story take place in rural Louisiana, far away from the cosmopolitan urban life. Being far away from urban and cosmopolitan culture, the people are shown as rigid. The story divides into two families. First is the family of male protagonist that is Hank and the second part is the family of Leticia. Hank’s family is a distressed family, where three men of three different generations are living together under one single roof with blood relations, but there is a vacuum of these generations. The father of Hank has a completely negative shade. He is extremely malicious towards black people. The extreme hatred is shown in the scene where he is so happy to read the article from a local newspaper about the execution of Lawrence Musgrove. He basically is pleased with the thought that one more man of colour is killed. He has passed on this same hatred to his son Hank. Hank’s son Sonny on the other hand is very sensible and sympathetic kind of person. He is lonely and somewhere searching for motherly love and care which has lost in his life. His father hates him and he is not accepted in his family. Somewhere he is in need of that lost love, affection and sense of acceptance. He was urging for his father’s love and affection. Sonny asks his father, “You hate me, don’t you?” his father coldly admitted that he doesn’t love him. Sonny before shooting himself says, “Well, I always love you,” and he kills himself in front of his father Hank. Hanks wife and his mother had committed suicide in a same manner. The second parallel family is Leticia’s family. She is living as a single mother. She is living with her son, Tyrell. She is an African American woman whose husband Lawrence Musgrove is executed after a long waiting of 11 years. Her needs are both financial and emotional. She and her son are struggling and undergoing through financial crisis. She is in need of economic stability as well as mental stability. Her urge for her need is shown through her action of drinking. The audience are shocked when they see the suicide of Sonny. Why did Sonny become a sudden victim of frenzy? He was in need of his father’s affection at that moment. If his father had shown that affection, he probably would not have taken such a drastic step of killing himself. Same thing is with Leticia when she is shown smoking cigarette. Actually she is restless and at that moment she wants someone to give her solace, to take her out of her frustration. She wants to come out of her loneliness. It is her stupid attempt to find peace from smoking. When her son has an accident and she is shouting for help on the road hysterically, she is in need of someone who would help her and her son physically. This momentary need of course was fulfilled by Hank, who takes them to the hospital. The momentary need further develops a very close relationship between her and Hank. The complete transformation of the protagonist is also one of the major attributes of the narrative. The contradictory behaviour of Hank creates an absurdity. Initially he is shown as strong malice for black people. His feeling of hatred is so intense that he cannot even bear the entry of black people in his property. When Sonny’s two black friend come to his house he suddenly shows his racial hatred and shouts, “Tell them to get off my property.” Soon after when he purchases a new gas station, he names it after his fiancée, Leticia, who is also a black woman. We may probably speculate that it is complete transformation of Hank from racism to impartial and broad outlook or from long cherished misogyny and bigotry to philanderer and fairness. Some incidents need to happen for the transformation of the protagonist. For understanding his son’s feeling he has to lose his son. Sonny’s death awakens the senses of fatherhood and leads to his guilt for his rude and cold behaviour towards his son. The death of his son leads Hank to completed disconnection with his monstrous father. Hank starts feeling that he is responsible for the death of his son. After the death of his son, the bridge between Hank and his father widens and he keeps himself away from his father. Their relationship thus spoils. Hank also is living a lonely life and in need of a companion. In this phase of his life, Leticia comes in his life. Thus it is again his transformative journey from biasness to genuineness. Leticia and Hank come very close to each other. Their closeness comes out of certain physical and psychological needs. The intimacy is the culmination of a series of scenes which happen in the movie. If certain conditions had not happened, they would have not been close to each other. There were hardly any chances for their intimacy because Hank was a staunch racist. But later on, his mind is transformed. He wants to break the chain of past by changing the complete pattern of his life and by accepting the people once he used to deny. Thus he accepts his son after his death which is shown in his action of quitting the job. His working place becomes the death place of his only son and he just boycotted the place, which snatched away his son from him. If we study the story and observe the psyche of all characters, one thing is clear that they are all using each other for solace and comforts of their lives. Sonny, Hank’s son is searching love and affection and for that he approaches a prostitute also. His mental depression is so much that he cannot find whatever he is searching for. As mentioned above, one incident when Hank humiliates Sonny’s black friends and shows his intense racism, and then very soon he starts dating with Leticia, a black widow. It means that their relationship also is based on the need. He needs Leticia just for fulfilling his sexual need. After the death of his wife, he is looking for a physical love also. In Leticia he gets his lost pleasure. Hence he continues his sexual relationship with her. Sonny’s black friends are of no use to him. The narrative is inexplicit and cannot fully elaborate the contradiction between an evil and monstrous patriarch head of the family who is responsible for the death of his son. On the contrary the same person is shown as caring sensitive lover of a Black widow. The masculinity in Monster’s Ball has a special narrative structure. The narrative unfolds the various versions of masculinity. Such stupid norms of masculinity are beyond the bearing of the extreme sensitive person like Sonny. In the first act for example Hank and Sonny are putting Cop killer Lawrence Musgrove to death by an electric chair. When they are on their way to the chair Sonny vomits on the floor. His vomiting of course is not the culmination of any physical problem but it was related to his anguish comes from his sensitive nature. It is because he feels so sad and scared. His sensitivity is not accepted in the abject norms of masculinity. A typical masculine approach never welcomes the sensitivity. There is no place for feelings and emotions. “Thou shalt not feel.” Hank was very furious because he thinks that his son has broken the rules by being weak. Some nude scenes and sex scenes are there in the film. There is a long sex scene in which they are trying to heal the wounds they get in their life due to continuous tensions, shocks and immense grief and loneliness through having sex. The director wants to show the audience that initially they were not involved in each other emotionally but still somewhere they need each other at least on physical level. The scene was no doubt very essential as it was interlinked with the narrative structure of the film. But to my personal opinion it should not have to much lengthy. What does the director wants to achieve by showing such a lengthy scene? It actually does not support the narrative. I think it must be the part of commercial approach. The power of the film lies in its powerful storyline as well as the powerful and vivid performances of the characters. Monster’s Balls is the film constantly trying to construct a concise and visceral picture of path which further demonstrates the journey from isolation to intimacy and for constructing it, a film-specific technique has been used. The technique of forced linear dimension is used in Monster’s Ball, where the film can jump to and fro between two or more elements. These elements could probably simultaneous but spatially dissimilar within the filmic world. The example of this element is Parallel cutting, which is used in Monster’s Ball effectively. The incidents in which this technique is used is when Leticia’s husband goes through the last moment of his execution, the film suddenly jumps to the scenes of Leticia along with his son at home, sitting restlessly and watching “Sky Surfing” show on TV. Parallel cutting is the technique which has created a kind of suspense in the film. The Parallel technique has also compels the characters to seen in proximity of each other even though they are literary isolated from each other. From the privileged position of the audience the characters are seen together even though they are acting in isolation. The other technique of the film is the cinemascope aspect ratio, which frames its carefully composed images. The technique has proved effectively as it reinforces the isolation of the characters by placing them each other, at a great distance. For keeping the effect intact, further the conversations are also edited. Music of Monster’s Ball: The Monster’s Ball soundtrack album was released in 2002. Being his first film, Director Marc Forster took a specific approach of music. Music of Monster’s Ball has taken an approach of Thomas Newman aesthetic. According to this school of music the music should enhance the drama, add the texture and underline the meaning. But at the same time it should not tell the audience of the film how to feel? The music of Monster’s Ball is composed by Asche and Spenser Band. The music is eerie, moody and strange. Thus music reveals the continual uneasiness, restlessness and absurdism of the film. For the music of Monsters Ball, the instrumentation is sparse and mainly the electric guitar, keyboard, bass and marimba are used. While composing the music, the composers mainly focus on emotional journey of the story. The stroke of guitar is used in a very soft and reflective manner but at the same time they enhance the effect of the scene. Though the movie is entirely dark, it ends with a little optimistic note. When Leticia goes to Hank’s house, she meets his father and was insulted for him on her race. Later on she is evicted from her house. Hank suggests her to come to him. She accepts it but then she comes to know that Hank, her lover is responsible for her husband’s death. In the end both of them are seen eating ice-cream together. Apart from knowing that Hank is her husband’s murderers, she stays with him. It probably be the reason that both of them are lonely and lost their loved ones. Hank has lost his wife long years back. He also loses his son physically and he has completely disconnected himself from his father. Their lives have brought them to a certain phase, where being alone was not possible for them. So we can say that they are victims of their circumstances and now the same circumstance is forcing them to live together. In that sense we can say that their love is selfish and not completely unconditional. Though Monster’s Ball does not have the attributes of being a classic film but the strong points of the film are its powerful narrative, and its powerful characterization. The silent act of the characters like Leticia, her two opposite expressions of being hysteric in one situation and being calm and silent in another situation is undoubtedly amazing. Halle Berry deserves Oscar for her outstanding performance in the role of Leticia. The film definitely deserves acclaim. Sources: 1. “Monster’s Ball” A film Directed by Marc Foster 2. Falk Ben “Monster’s Ball (2002)” (BBC film review: June 5, 2002) http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/02/13/monsters_ball_2002_review.shtml 3. Whitaker Matthew “Icon of Black America: Breaking Barriers and Crossing Boundaries – Volume 1, (ABC – CLIO: 2011) 108 Read More