Movie City Indie

« Indie is at a triple-feature. | Main | Ballast (2008, *** 1/2) »

October 01, 2008

A bird by any other name: the critical ornithology of Ballast

---

---

Movie reviewers are watchers, but who's the better birdwatcher? Writing in the New York Times today, Manohla Dargis lavishes attention on an early passage: "Shot on 35mm film by the British cinematographer Lol Crawley, it opens with a hand-held camera trailing after a boy of around 12, James (JimMyron Ross), looking and then walking toward—and soon running at—hundreds, thousands, of geese noisily taking flight into the blue winter sky. The boy doesn’t say a word as he watches this screeching mass, yet a feeling of loneliness, thick as a winter coat and every bit as palpable as those darkly swirling birds (surging like storm clouds, like waves), settles around him." Others made similar note, such as Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "A boy or young man in a down coat, seen from the rear, walks through the weeds into a flat, horizontal field, probably one where corn or cotton or soybeans are grown. From the coat and the light and the empty field, it appears to be winter, although part of the seductive power of Ballast is that elemental questions like where and when go unanswered. As the boy advances, a flock of scavenging birds— likely a murder of crows—explodes out of the field, and this almost painterly composition abruptly becomes a chaotic whirlwind." James Rocchi, at Cinematical, is less categorical. "It is winter in the Mississippi Delta, and the fields are fallow under dead skies and barren trees thrust up stark from the muck. If it were summer, the sky would be clear and the crops would be green and the soil would burn with life, but summer is far away. A boy moves across the mud and water, and he runs toward a flock of resting birds, making them jump to frightened flight tilting through the gray light, just to make them do it, just so something else knows he's alive." At indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman has a different vision. "The film's opening shot is striking: a young black boy runs away towards a screaming flock of seagulls filling the sky. The eruption of noise and movement quickly gives way to silence and stillness and the title credit." The trailer, featuring the avian suspects in question, is above. [In comments, reader TLC suggests they're snow geese; details below.]

Posted by Ray Pride at October 1, 2008 05:05 PM

Comments

Posted by: Snowyowl at October 3, 2008 03:28 PM

Post a comment