Photo Courtesy Sundance Film Festival

In the first frame of Lance Hammer's Ballast, James (JimMyron Ross) walks in a grey winter field, his black coat too large on his shoulders, his steps steady despite a perspective trembling coarse with bumps. His reality is one inherently unstable. In its gritty, romanticized pastoral view of Black-American poverty, Ballast evokes the spirits of Charles Burnett's The Killer of Sheep and David Gordon Green's George Washington, and in many ways, there's a feeling this silent story has already been told on film. Yet, it's a story told now, in this director's loving hands, because there's a quality universal to its silence. There's something of Carson McCullers in the film; something of Toni Morrison; something of Sandra Cisneros; something unassuming; something knowing; something still innocent despite its characters being broken. Ballast is the type of passionate debut that makes itself memorable by its sheer purity. It's a film that while perhaps only bearable to watch once, leaves a footprint of its importance in the manner of a classic.

The pieces of Ballast fall into place slowly, none of them seeming to fit nicely together for the first twenty minutes of the film. When John (Johnny McPhail, in a remarkable minor performance) discovers his neighbor Darius dead by overdose on sleeping pills, his call to the police triggers a suicide attempt by Darius' temporarily catatonic twin brother Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith, Sr.) After weeks of recovery at the hospital, Lawrence returns home to multiple, gun-mediated encounters with the 12-year-old James. Demanding money to feed his developing drug habit, James bonds with Lawrence over the nose of his barrel.

A violent encounter with drug dealers James owes money too lands his single mother Marlee (Tarra Riggs) desperate and out of work. Moving into the house adjacent to Lawrence's, which is now revealed to have been willed by Darius to his former love and his child, Marlee and James try to keep their distance from Lawrence, the estranged brother-in-law and uncle.

Unforgiving circumstances find the three lonely people drawn together--Marlee running the family-owned gas station and food stop, Lawrence tutoring James in home school. Tensions between the three continually erupt to the surface however, Lawrence confusing himself with his beloved brother, Marlee fighting her desire not to forgive either man for his abandonment and distrust. It's a tango of necessity to connect and desire to flee, a dance executed by Riggs in no less than a remarkable, organic performance that showcases her talent as of the ilk divined by nature; by Smith, Sr. in a quiet contemplation that doesn't quite hit the mark in the beginning but that blossoms in the much more heavily emotional later scenes; and by Ross in a wide-eyed solitude that's endearing in its lack of affectation.

The Mississippi Delta landscape and Lol Crawley's gorgeous cinematography also play as characters of the film, their expanse and intimacy reeling the emotions of the story in. Although the setting and images convey a palpable loneliness and emotional remove, they also develop a sense of overwhelming comfort sprung from the of acceptance of a flood.

A story that in its simplicity doesn't cater to simplistic comprehension, Ballast may flounder as it seeks out distribution outside the film festival circuit. For although stories of this importance ought be heard, its always stories like these that get hidden in the silence they convey.

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