Burden (2018)

Directed by: Andrew Heckler | 118 minutes | drama | Actors: Andrea Riseborough, Garrett Hedlund, Forest Whitaker, Tom Wilkinson, Tess Harper, Usher Raymond, Crystal Fox, Austin Hébert, Anna Colwell, Jason Davis, Charles Green, Dexter Darden, Jeff Pope, Jessejames Locorriere, Joshua Burge, Robin Dyke, Tia Hendricks, Alex Van, Al Mitchell, Tian Richards, Estes Tarver, Carolyn Jones Ellis, Lindsey Moser, Roman Spink, Fiona Domenica, Devin Bright

Men in (usually) white robes including pointed hats who gather in the dark to set fire to crosses to underline their sense of white superiority. That terrifying image is officially a thing of the past; at least, a centrally organized Ku Klux Klan no longer exists. Instead, various splinter organizations have taken their place that uphold the objectionable ideology. Racism is unfortunately still not out of the world, we see that in the newspapers and on the news in 2020 as well. In the US (and beyond) it seems to be entrenched in society. Has the entire civil rights movement that strived for equal rights for black and white been for nothing? The drama ‘Burden’ (2018) by debut director Andrew Heckler tries to be a pamphlet of hope. It is the true story of a man who was raised with the ideas of the KKK, but ultimately chose love to break with his past. That was not exactly made easy for him by his old ‘family’.

Despite the human rights movement; in the small town of Laurens, South Carolina, time seems to have stood still all these years. Racial segregation is still the order of the day here, at least for part of the population. A group of young rednecks do odd jobs and toil to get a storefront in order in time for the grand opening. If successful, they celebrate with a barbecue and a campfire; dogs bark happily and children splash around in a truck bed that has been turned into a swimming pool. A peaceful opening scene, but appearances can be deceiving: the shop turns out to serve as a KKK museum and merchandise shop, and the great leader Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson) allows young Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund) to run the tent. Mike was once taken off the street as an orphan by Griffin and taken under his wing: a vulnerable boy of humble origins like him willingly indoctrinated with his racist ideology. He simply doesn’t know any better and sees in the black fellow man an easy scapegoat to vent his own frustrations about his low literacy, poverty and hopeless existence.

But then he gets to know the single mother Judy (Andrea Riseborough). She doesn’t like racism; for example, her son’s best friend is a black boy and she also hangs out with his parents (R’nB stars Usher Raymond and Tia Hendricks). She also has deep respect for the Rev. David Kennedy (Forest Whitaker), who – in the line of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – with nonviolent resistance tries to close the KKK museum in his city because hate is being preached. When Judy can no longer stand up to Mike’s racist “relatives”, she forces him to make a choice: If he wants a relationship with her and her son, he must break with the Klan. Mike chooses love, but it loses more than just his old friends: Griffin and associates decide to make it impossible for him to build a new life, and Mike and Judy see no choice but to turn to Rev. Kennedy for help. shelter. But logically, not everyone is eager to take in a violent racist.

For Heckler, an actor with a modest resume, this is a project that is very close to his heart. Reportedly, he already had plans for a film adaptation in the late 1990s, just after the events in Laurens, which took place in 1996; the screenplay had been ready for about twenty years before a producer was finally found to work with him. The persistence wins, shall we say. Heckler could not have imagined in the late 1990s that the theme of his brainchild would still be highly topical two decades later. You can tell from the film that Heckler is a rookie behind the camera, because visually and tonally it is all a bit chaotic and inconsistent. The screenplay and character descriptions are also quite succinct and oversimplified: the black population of Laurens is forgiving, righteous and compassionate, while the white people are aggressive, silly and rude. Only the characters Mike and Judy have expanded further and are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, albeit Mike more to the right and Judy more to the left. Heckler also introduces an analogy in which a deer plays the main role; nice idea, but because it is so half-heartedly worked out he should have left it out.

What the debut director has succeeded in doing is sketching in detail the micro-society in which the Klan members live. The barbecue scene described earlier is richly decorated, dynamic and atmospheric and underlined: these people may have a reprehensible philosophy, but they certainly also have a different, friendlier side. Heckler has also done an excellent job in his choice of actors. Oscar winner Forest Whitaker (‘The Last King of Scotland’, 2006) and the two-time Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson (‘In the Bedroom’, 2001 and ‘Michael Clayton’, 2007), you can’t go wrong with that. But it is mainly Hedlund and Riseborough that impress here. Hedlund makes Mike Burden into a very physical character, with a peculiar gait, frequent looking down (as if he’s used to being submissive), an inseparable piece of chewing tobacco and dirty clothes. A character that immediately drips with tragedy. We only get snippets of his history; that as a little boy he was friends with Usher’s character Clarence Brooks, for example. Of course you don’t have to chew everything out, but we would have loved to know how Mike was once driven into Griffin’s arms. Riseborough is equally convincing; despite her humble origins, she considers everyone equal, which makes her instantly endearing. She doesn’t immediately judge Mike because of his background, sees that he deserves a second chance, especially when she sees how nice he is with her son.

‘Burden’ becomes, certainly in the second half, moralistic and preachy and then abandons all subtlety. But the message in itself that Heckler wants to convey is one of forgiveness and hope and of course you can’t object to that. The director is not good at hiding the fact that this is his debut, but fortunately he can rely on a convincing cast who keep his essentially sympathetic film afloat.