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
