I don’t know what I was thinking. Must have been the rain. Whenever there was some sunshine, I picked a movie and told the DVR to get to it. What made me pick “Monster’s Ball,” I don’t know. It’s not a happy flick. I mean, it’s the kinda movie you see once, and then you don’t see it again. Ever. Who wants to go through that twice? A bunch of Jackson, MS crackers holding down the black people in their hood, Puff Daddy playing an artistic convict, Mos Def playing the righteous neighbor of a racist ass Billy Bob, poor Heath Ledger killing himself and foreshadowing future suicides, and Halle doing maybe the worst Southern accent ever, but winning an Academy Award for it. One imagines it was because she showed her tits and more without asking for a spare $500k, a la “Swordfish.” “Make me feel good!” she demands. Well, alright then. It’s still a top notch, albeit slightly demented, shot on the floor through a doorway sex scene, and you can’t watch it without feeling dirty. But it makes you feel good, too, don’t it?
So maybe that’s why I watched it again. Halle unbound. Billy Bob and the grey hairs in action. Two opposite points of the divide coming together. Pleasure from pain. But, along the way, I got the gist of greater themes, of sons following fathers, and rejecting them at a critical point, of the travails of aging and of a history we can’t escape, of the wanton need for a fuck (even if it’s a saggy, fake titted hooker bending over the nightstand), and the atavistic, visceral need for a good mechanic. Lord knows, I can empathize.
The whole movie was shot from some awkward angle. There’s sin, and people trying to put it right. Nothing is really in the frame, and we struggle together to find a focus. Yeah, it took too long for Billy Bob to tell his father to fuck right off, but he does, eventually. And to see that old bastard (Buck, rhymes with…) get his just desserts is thoroughly satisfying, no matter how long it takes. (“Hey Dad! You just screwed up my hot sex relationship/chance for love and a new beginning!” Old coot says: “Aww son, you just wanted to split the black oak! You’ll get over it.” Son says, “Fuck you! I’m sending you to the old folks home!”)
“You must love him very much,” says the black secretary at the home. (Yes, yes, terrible irony, the racist being cared for by the “porch monkeys” he hates.)
“No, I don’t,” says Billy Bob.
At the end, they sit on the porch, monkeying around with ice cream, the forbidden fruit that led to the fat son’s undoing (in a way) and the couple’s original meeting. Halle is cursed with the recent knowledge that her new guy helped kill her old guy, state sanctioned though it was. Everything in her looks ready to recoil, to take off into some uncertain future, but she stays as he talks of future expansion to his (and her) empire.. She eats that ice cream and looks heavenward with a sly smile. Maybe she’s numb. Maybe it’s the shock of it all. Or maybe Billy’s on point when he says,
“I think we’re going to be alright.”
Bye, Pop. I’m not bleeding for you anymore.
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