Actors - Monster's Ball

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	Actors - Monster's Ball

Monster's Ball is a 2001 American drama/romance film. It was directed by Marc Forster and written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. Produced by Lions Gate Films and Lee Daniels Entertainment. +A lifetime of change can happen in a single moment.

Plot summary

Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton), a widower, is employed as a prison guard. Sonny (Heath Ledger), Hank's son, works alongside his father in the family occupation. Both are unable to relate to women. Hank resides with his racist father, Buck (Peter Boyle) who is retired, sick and home-bound (and has driven his own wife to suicide). Together Hank and Sonny must assist in the execution of convicted murderer Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs), an event which has repercussions for both men. Later, Hank meets Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry), Lawrence's widow, who has been struggling for several years to raise her son Tyrell, and to make ends meet. Eventually, with each longing for human connection in their grief, Hank and Leticia reach out for each other and unexpectedly fall in love.

Main cast

Billy Bob Thornton
… as Hank Grotowski
Halle Berry
… as Leticia Musgrove
Heath Ledger
… as Sonny Grotowski
Peter Boyle
… as Buck Grotowski
Sean Combs … as Lawrence Musgrove
Coronji Calhoun … as Tyrell Musgrove

The controversy within the acclaim

The film won Halle Berry the Academy Award for Best Actress despite its graphic depiction of sexual intercourse. This was a rare instance in which the Academy awarded a film with sexually explicit content.

African Americans were deeply split over Berry's winning the Award as well as actor Denzel Washington, who while consistently playing in acceptable and heroic roles, won his Oscar for playing a venal Los Angeles cop in Training Day
. Some of these differences are generational, while others are based on African American cultural, political and religious mores.

On websites and blogs such as SeeingBlack.com, BET.com, and EURWEB.com — new centers for discussion on black political and cultural issues — many poured out what they felt about what was really being said in the film. Some did not even view the film, but claimed "to know" enough about what was in it to urge others to boycott it, as with Miles Willis of KPFT's (Pacifica Radio's) 'Milestones' Jazz Program, who was upset with the film's premise. His statement, which was championed by syndicated film columnist Esther Iverem, went round the Black Internet, and included observations like this: "Imagine the seething indignation that a Jewish man might feel while watching a story in which the widow of a Nazi concentration camp victim has an intimate relationship with the SS officer that shoved her husband into one of those ovens at Auschwitz!" Willis was also angered at having to "watch fine black women gettin' down with mangy, white redneck 'billybobs'." Iverem, on Salon.com, chimed later, "You have to wonder if this is what it takes for a black woman to be named best actress Who was the last 'best actress' who did a nude sex scene?" (Actually, it was Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love
.) Iverem went on to say, "Ultimately, Monster's Ball uses the legacy of racism in an unconvincing manner to belittle its impact, and its historical and present-day consequences." Iverem maintained that scores of black men were boycotting the film, which they believed insulted, and even cuckolded them by coupling Berry with Billy Bob Thornton.

In the same Salon.com March 29, 2002 article, writer Uju Asika found on Seeing Black.com that many viewers did not believe, for example, that Berry was actually performing. Others believed that Berry had actually made love to Thornton, causing them to label her as a "whore" and a "traitor" to African Americans. Some thought that the standard for black love was going to be interracial love.

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