Ballast

The opening images of BALLAST present a young boy drifting freely in a vast Mississippi Delta flatscape and a middle-aged man immobilized by grief in the darkness of a small rural home. If, among other possibilities, the first can be regarded as an image of hope for “what can be”, and the second an image of regret for “what has become”, it is the emotional expanse between these poles that successive images will seek to reconcile.

Although 12 years old, the boy, James, is already beginning to stumble under the weight of poverty endemic to the Delta. As Marlee, his single mother, struggles to sustain their tenuous existence through long hours at a demeaning and poorly paying job, James is left to his own devices. He wanders. His venturings take him into the natural landscape, where he finds solace, and, increasingly, into the turbulent orbit of a group of local teenagers whom he seeks to impress. His willingness to perform the occasional drug drop with his motorcycle bodes well for his acceptance. Patiently, he nurtures this goal.

One morning James points his motorcycle in a new direction. He travels fifteen miles to the home of Lawrence, the middle-aged man. Though it is unclear what motivates the cruelty the boy will inflict upon this devastated soul, familiarly suggests a shared history.

When James’ interaction with the teenagers turns abruptly violent, Marlee reacts instinctively to excise him from the conflict. They flee their home in the night and alight, inexplicably, on Lawrence’s property. While, in the bodily sense, this will provide them with safe harbor, it will rekindle the fury of a malignant and irresolvable conflict that has existed between Lawrence and Marlee since James’ birth. Lawrence awakens to discover the visitors, Marlee lays claim to half of the property.

What ensues is a demonstration of the practical value of humility when the future of a child is in peril. To this end, it is also an exploration of an instinct to protect the ideal of “potential” as it is embodied in youth – in this case, protection from the devastating forces of poverty that seek to mute it. Though grief has left Lawrence hopeless, though guilt has left him suicidal, he must now consider a child. To this child, he can be of use.

BALLAST led the 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Award nominations, which were announced on October 20th by IFP. BALLAST garnered four nods, including Best Feature, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Breakthrough Director, and Best Breakthrough Actor.

2008 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL – DIRECTING AWARD & CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD, DRAMATIC COMPETITION
2008 BERLIN INT’L FILM FESTIVAL, COMPETITION
2008 NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
2008 INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON - GRAND JURY PRIZE
2008 SAN FRANCISCO INT’L FILM FESTIVAL - FIPRESCI PRIZE
2008 BUENOS AIRES INT’L FILM FESTIVAL - FIPRESCI PRIZE & DIRECTING AWARD

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

There is an energetic resonance in the Delta that moves me, especially in winter. It has to do with the dignity of endurance in the face of sorrow. Being energetic in nature, language is inherently incapable of communicating the totality of the sensation. For many years I’ve had the desire to make a film that, at its core, is an attempt to convey some portion of this essentially tonal phenomenon. Because tone is inherently formless, I realized that some degree of narrative structure would be required – some poles to give form to an amorphous tent. My hope is that the narrative has remained minimal and unobtrusive. I hope that is has served to convey the sense of sorrow that envelops this beautiful and complicated place.

BALLAST is a product of intensive collaboration with non-professional actors. With one exception, all characters are portrayed by residents of the Delta townships where the scenes were recorded and have no prior film acting experience. Though a script was created, it was not distributed. Scenario was discussed, then given form, in the course of a two-month rehearsal process. Actors contributed their own language to the rehearsals, dialogue evolved as the result.

All imagery was photographed in existing locations with available light on 35mm film.

—Lance Hammer


“A startlingly assured, pitch-perfect first feature... An elegiac, rapturously lovely story set in the Mississippi Delta and featuring a cast of unknown black actors, would have been news in any year… idiosyncratic, intensely personal, stylistically venturesome, nonformulaic.. Guarantees are for washing machines, after all, not art, and films like BALLAST and WENDY AND LUCY don’t need big distributors, a mass audience or a Spirit Award to prove their worth. Like the finest independents, they aren’t trying to emulate Hollywood… Like BALLAST it will make its way into theaters, where it will be much loved and remembered long after it leaves.” – Manohla Dargis, NY Times

“Lance Hammer’s BALLAST and Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY AND LUCY…examples of the kind of socially engaged. unsentimental American realism that has crept into view, and into some measure of critical acceptance, in recent years.”
- AO Scott, NY Times

“Lance Hammer’s austerely, elegant, emotionally unadorned riff on life and death in the Mississippi Delta… It’s a serious achievement and a welcome sign of a newly invigorated American independent cinema... (The filmmaker) does something so many movies forget: he captures the rhythms of life.” – Manohla Dargis, NY Times

“Has earned director Lance Hammer the nickname ‘the third Dardenne brother.’ The comparison is a high compliment, and Hammer’s poetic sensibility and sensitivity to people living below the poverty line feel like a fresh breeze.” – Time Out NY

“4 STARS. Has the denatured feel of bruised Bergman. It comes as a gift, one of BALLAST’S most praiseworthy, that these three characters grow together in ways that are totally unsentimental.” – Josh Rothkopf, Time Out NY

“BALLAST is clearly one of the signal accomplishments of American independent film in 2008. A haunting and beautiful experience. You shouldn’t miss it. An audacious debut. Begins with a remarkable shot. Hammer and cinematographer Lol Crawley get breathtaking wide-screen results.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

“Unhurried rhythms and spare, beautifully composed shots infuse BALLAST with the sweet, dark melancholy of a Delta blues. (A) remarkable, unfailingly intelligent debut film.” – Elena Oumano, Village Voice

“One of the most acclaimed independent films of the year.” – Dennis Lim, NY Times

“(A) languid, hauntingly austere film. BALLAST offers hope, with a capital H. But it’s no simple hope. All the way to a final shot that looks like closure of the conservative kind until we realize that it isn’t, the film is loaded with ambiguity, irony, paradox – the stuff of life. James’s desire for freedom and community energizes the film’s very first frames: the boy running toward a school of geese as if yearning to fly… the most arresting and indelible opener I’ve see in years, brilliantly captured in handheld, widescreen 35mm by DP Lol Crawley – evokes the final one in THE 400 BLOWS. (A) story of spiritual revitalization.”
- Rob Nelson, Film Comment

“An extraordinary American director. The story has more verity than flash. Hammer’s editing is like gentle weaving. He leads our eyes, as good editing always does. The temper of the film is so intensely personal that it is small surprise to learn how it was made. The performers made their roles as if they were making their own garments. What is implicit here, under the reticence, is Hammer’s talent. His choices of the non-actors, his relations with them, his skill at evocation, his pruning, his fixed view of what he was working toward. BALLAST, like every outstanding film, is something of a double experience. The drama holds us yet we are equally taken by Hammer’s vision and his ability to fulfill it.”
- Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

“A journey of discovery that forces us to cast off the clichés of race, poverty and existence in the Deep South.”
– Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"The film has a gathering artistic and emotional force that's hard to shake. Tarra Riggs is a true force of nature - volatile, acutely sensitive, industrious. She earned my tears and all my heart."
– Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

"Beautiful. The film bears patient witness to what could be described as the nearly invisible movement of souls."
– Amy Taubin, Film Comment

"The one indisputably great film at Sundance '08… a striking debut for the writer-director Lance Hammer. His poetic and profound movie transcends categories and announces the arrival of a major new filmmaker."
– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone