Mark Reviews Movies: BURDEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 5, 2020

About midway through writer/director Andrew Heckler's debut movie Burden, the main character, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in a small town in South Carolina, more or less explains his racist attitudes with a story from his childhood. While hunting with his father, the man, then just a young and impressionable boy, came across a deer. He thought it was cute and felt some kind of connection with the animal.

That's when his father fired a rifle and killed the deer, as his son watched. Ever since then, Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund) shoos away any deer he sees. In his mind, it's better for the animal that way, because it won't become a target for the sort of people to whom Mike is close.

There's another story about an animal a bit later in the movie. This anecdote is told by Reverend Kennedy (Forest Whitaker), the pastor of a local traditionally black church, who comes to believe that he can change Mike's mind and heart through love. His mother used to take the bus to work, and on her way home, she would pass a dog, chained up in a yard. She would sometimes see the dog's owner beating the poor creature, so one day, the mother just brought the dog home.

It was a grateful and loving pet, but if there was ever any kind of argument in the house, the dog had to be put into the back room. Otherwise, it would bite.

Both stories, obviously, are intended to shine some light on the nature of Mike's racism. Kennedy's story makes sense. People aren't born to hate, to lash out, or to fight. They're raised into such attitudes and behavior. Even wanting to change might not be enough, because such responses are almost reflexes after enough time of living with and among them.

The pastor knows this all too well. He grew up surrounded by such senseless hate and violence. His uncle was lynched by the KKK, and Kennedy's own status as a leader in the community has made him a target for the Klan, which still operates in this town at time the story is set—in 1996. They've even opened a museum to the terrorist group in the heart of the town, and Kennedy believes he can get it shut down with peaceful protests.

Mike's own animal-related tale is as easy to understand, if a little suspicious in terms of what we see of him and what we know about hate—even before Kennedy tells his own story about the dog. The core idea to it is that Mike has become stuck with the Klan, because they're his friends and the local group's leader Tom (Tom Wilkinson) is like a father to him. The whole idea of disassociating from black people, though, is a conscious decision on his part, because harm might come to anyone who gets too close to him.

This boils down to a lot of apologizing for the character and, in an attempt to make Mike more sympathetic and to make his redemption a lot easier, introduces a rather strange categorization of racism. Mike isn't just some regular, old racist. He's basically a "protective racist," who doesn't really hate people because of the color of their skin. Mike just wants to keep them safe from people who are a lot worse than him.

This is a long-winded way of explaining how this movie, which has good intentions about how love and kindness and friendship can change a person's hateful heart, goes out of its way to limit its own understanding of racism and its consequences. By putting Mike in as positive a light as possible from the start, Heckler isn't quite telling the story he clearly wants to tell. By the end, yes, Mike has learned the errors of his ways and his thinking, but the movie frames this man's story in a way that's not about overcoming hate. It's about acknowledging the already-present truth of his mind and heart.

The way the story, based on a true one, gets there is pretty familiar. Mike meets and falls in love with Judy (Andrea Riseborough), a single mother whose grandfather was in the KKK but who has fully rejected that way of thinking. After she sees the Klan's influence spreading to her son, Judy gives Mike an ultimatum: It's them or her. He chooses her, and their lives are ruined by the KKK's unspoken power within the town.

All of this eventually leads to Kennedy helping Mike, Judy, and her son. There are scenes here that come close to digging into heart of hatred and finding a path toward redemption, but they only come close. There are a few scenes that address Mike's mentality head-on (Mike is present for two of them, and Kennedy has a monologue for his family and friends about why he feels sorry for people like Mike), and they are wise and thoughtful—only half realized.

Throughout Burden, Heckler's hesitation to really delve into these ideas is apparent, and a major part of that is the main character. He's intentionally separated from some notion of "actual" racism, so the movie's own examination of the issue feels sincere but hollow.

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