10s Movie Review - Burden

Director: Andrew Heckler
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 118 minutes
Year: 2018
Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker, Tom Wilkinson Andrea Riseborough, Usher Raymond

Description: When a museum celebrating the Ku Klux Klan opens in a South Caroline town, the idealistic Reverend Kennedy (Forest Whitaker) strives to keep the peace even as he urges the group’s Grand Dragon to disavow his racist past.

Review: In its opening scene, “Burden” introduces a group of white men of low economic status from South Carolina who could be condescendingly called ‘rednecks’. But judging them from these opening scenes, there is no need to use such an insulting term. Main character Mike Burden, for example, seems like quite a fit guy. When he comes to single mother Judy’s house for work to confiscate things because of the debts her ex-husband has left her with, Mike manages to arrange for her to keep the television so that her young son can continue to watch his beloved NASCAR races. And in an old vacant movie theater building, Mike and his friends cheerfully set about doing something new with it. Hard workers, nothing to look down on. And then suddenly it is revealed what they have established here: the Ku Klux Klan museum.
Because yes, evidently these men have no qualms about calling themselves rednecks. And the new function of the building implies that they don’t shy away from equally offensive terms for people of other ethnicities either. Their interest in the Ku Klux Klan, by the way, goes beyond a hobby, because at night they stand with conviction under white hoods burning crosses. The local black community did not let this provocation pass and , under the leadership of the activist Reverend Kennedy, begin a peaceful yet loud protest. The museum’s operators respond with what appears to be a southern kindness, but when the situation seems to escalate, Mike is immediately positioned with a loaded rifle on the roof of the museum to shoot the black pastor when needed.
Despite his involvement in this hateful club, Mike’s good nature ensures that he gets a relationship with the aforementioned Judy, for whose son he proves to be a remarkably suitable father figure. This does not mean, however, that Judy out of love turns a blind eye to Mikes racist activities. When his surrogate father and local Klan leader thinks to liven up a dinner with a racist joke, she immediately leaves the table. It is typical of her character: no lifted finger, but also no patience for other’s people’s nonsense. Judy is from the same region as Mike and his friends, but she absolutely does not consider herself better than her black fellow man and she dares to say so openly. In principle, that should be admirable, but probably few would blame this penniless single mother in rural South Carolina in 1996 if she took Mike’s ideas for granted.
Judy, then, serves as the key figure of “Burden”, setting in motion a development in Mike. It is clever how this is done by staying close to the events that inspired the film, instead of falling back on easy script tricks. For example, it would have been extremely easy to make Judy a black woman or give her a child that she had with a black man. Instead, she belons to the same group of people as Mike, that the KKK claims to stand up for. Her aversion to the ideas of Mikes company thus does not stem from a personal agenda; she is simply a good person. And despite her misfortune, she does not choose the path of least resistance but instead presents Mike with a choice: get out of the Klan or get out of my house. Fortunately, he makes the right decision. This all makes Judy the best character in the film, without a doubt.
With that, “Burden” already seems to have reached its happy ending halfway, but the film goes on for a while. For the right choice turns out to have a high price. In retaliation for his ‘betrayal’ the Klan turns Mike and Judy’s lives upside down in such a way that in no time they are jobless and homeless. However, they get help from an unexpected source: the aforementioned black minister Kennedy. He gets the chance to put his oft preached forgiveness into practice, but taking in a former Klan member with the necessary misdeeds on his record, gets him absolutely no sympathy in the black community. Once again, making the right choice doesn’t necessarily make a life easier.
With his debut as writer and director, Andrew Heckler makes a remarkably good first impression. “Burden” is a pleasantly enervating film, with enough surprises to keep one’s attention. Unfortunately, it ends with a rather clumsy activist appeal. While Forest Whitaker and Tom Wilkinson are the big names in this film, it’s Garret Hedlund and Andrea Riseborough as the central couple who make the most impact, with Riseborough being the absolute star as Judy. A classically trained British actress playing a southern women of low income rarely works out well, but Riseborough proves that she can completely disappear into a role.
“Burden” is definitely a film you should check out.

Rating: 3,5/ 5