Review of Ballast (2008) by Mike M — 05 Mar 2011
This tendency to view the characters as victims above all else, coupled with the eye-strainingly low light and sometimes mumbled dialogue, makes "Ballast" at the very least a challenging watch; it's the kind of filmmaking you want to lend 10p for the meter, and I suspect some will be tempted to walk away around the half-hour mark, when the characters bottom out and whatever narrative there is begins to have a little heat put underneath it.
.. but its battles do feel hard-won, and the whole project is marked by a fierce determination to scratch something out on the margins about a part of the world, and the kinds of lives, we may not have seen very much of.
There is promise in these rough, sometimes crude-looking strokes.
This review of Ballast (2008) was written by Mike M on 05 Mar 2011.
Ballast has generally received positive reviews.
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