Jennifer Browning

I just watched again after decades, and as an older person from its release in 2001, I found it more profound today. The name "Monster's Ball" particularly struck me this time around.. A dark, somber walk through the lives of characters who are best described as those relegated to enduring the unending suffering of life's crushing weight.  Lawrence, as a murderer on death row bearing down his fate using his art sharing renderings of Hank and Sonny (his prison guards); Hank bearing down stoking the coals of his life long fires of being imprisoned by his hate and resentment toward his son and father in a lineage of Georgia corrections officers; Sonny, who can't bear down and kills himself due to the unwavering rejection by his father, Hank; Buck, Hank's father, who is the eternal gardener sewing seeds of racist hate and cold disapproval that destroyed his own wife and son's lives; and finally, Leticia bearing the weight of her husband being brutally put down by the system via electric chair leaving her alone to continually struggle through relentless poverty, impatiently raising and berating an obese son who also dies unexpectedly, and being black in a time and place that only adds to her burden.  "Monster's Ball", a term associated with the "celebration" of the condemned prisoner's last night before imposed death, perfectly symbolizes and laughs at the life or "Ball" they all attend daily in honor of their punishment for being damaged, suffering, imperfect creatures whittled down by the buzz saw and random misfortunes of life.  But as each are monsters in this constellation of characters and circumstances, Leticia and Hank's worlds collide in the separate deaths of their sons.  They find each other in their grief which opens their worlds to the realization that despite the bleakest of hands life deals to its party-goers, there is hope, faith and trust that brings a calming peace to the embattled as they break their bondage of perpetual pain, anger and hate and instead decide to embrace empathy, compassion and self respect as well reach for each other in striving to being better humans.  In the last scene, while Hank is away buying ice cream in celebration of their evolving relationship and newly living together, we see that Leticia finds her husband's drawings of Hank and Sonny, and learns that Hank was party to her husband's execution in his role as a death row prison guard, a secret Hank did not share earlier on, and once again she is throttled by the betrayal of life in yet another cruel act of circumstance- and we are not sure how she will react to Hank once he returns home.  While her initial reaction is enraged and tortured, when Hank arrives, she foggily walks with him outside and sits on the steps overlooking the graves of Hank's mother, wife and son.  As he gently feeds her ice cream, it seems apparent in her resigned and numbed state, that she finally realizes there is a fair share of pain and grieving to go around in everyone's worlds just as there is in hers, but there is also music at the ball, that should they choose, together, the dance can go on.