Ballast Critic Reviews
Metascore®:
Based upon 11 Critic ReviewsHighest Rated
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Ballast inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us. I always say I hardly ever cry at sad films, but I sometimes do, just a little, at films about good people.Read the full review
This is the most significant feature about poor black life since Charles Burnett's 1977 "Killer of Sheep."Read the full review
A rock-ribbed sense of committed, personal cinema and a core belief in people being able to pull themselves out of misery supports Ballast, an extraordinary debut by editor-writer-director Lance Hammer.Read the full review
The final shot, of the three characters now united, may be the quietest affirmation of life I've ever seen in a movie, and one of the truest.Read the full review
A quintessentially American story that unmistakably echoes European art house cinema, combining the aesthetic purity of France's Robert Bresson with the social consciousness of Belgium's Dardenne brothers. It also is a powerful, character-driven melodrama that easily holds our attention from first to last.Read the full review
Working with non-pro actors, Hammer pulls authentic performances from the trio that are at times almost too painful to witness.Read the full review
Shot with a sure hand and a cast of unknowns, the film doesn't so much tell a story as develop a tone and root around a place that, despite the intimate camerawork, remains shrouded in ambiguity.Read the full review
This ostensibly simple film evokes whole lives in 96 minutes, and does so with sparse dialogue.Read the full review
Truly a winter's tale.Read the full review
Ballast, though, is less than completely satisfying in a dramatic sense. Events that seem to be important are dropped and left unresolved. Conflicts from the past are mentioned but never explained, as if key scenes were missing. Given that disinterest in conventional narrative techniques, the abrupt ending may be appropriate, but it feels wrong and arbitrary.Read the full review
