Great Acceptance Speeches: Halle Berry, "Monster's Ball"

We asked Team Experience to share their favourite Oscar acceptance speeches as we countdown to Hollywood's High Holy Night. Here's Chris Feil...

Would that all Best Actress years be as stacked and competitive as 2001. All major precursors had gone to a different performance (with Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones as a wildcard fifth nominee): BAFTA to Judi Dench, Globes for Nicole Kidman and Sissy Spacek, and SAG going to Halle Berry. But it would be the latter that would yield our ultimate momentous winner for her work in Monster’s Ball. It already felt like a showdown before her name was called, and this win would be the real event.

Berry was the first woman of color to win for a leading performance, and infuriatingly remains the only one. But you can see the passion in the room to overturn that embarrassingly legacy, the audience leaping to their feet as a stunned Berry initially collapsed into her seat. Denzel Washington would also win on a night that also saw a lifetime achievement prize given to Sidney Poitier - it’s a ceremony whose impact the Academy should consider chasing rather than pat itself on the back for...

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Black History Month: Monster's Ball and Representation

We were just wrapping up Black History Month when I heard from longtime reader/commenter Philip Harville who wanted to discuss Monster's Ball (2001). I wasn't touching that one with a ten foot pole (!) but here's Philip with a guest column on this perpetual hot potato. -Editor

As we know, black films are hard to come by and good black films can be even harder to come by.  This raises the question of what exactly a black film is. Is it simply a film that focuses on black characters? Or do we need to also have a black crew telling the story? The conversations unraveling from that thought are endless, but watching a certain film recently got me thinking. Monster’s Ball’s Leticia (Halle Berry) really suffers from a white male perspective behind the camera. The film gained a wide audience crowning Halle Berry as the first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, but did it create the conversation it should have? Good black films aren’t exactly churned out with the frequency of superhero movies (or Tyler Perry movies), so a flawed complicated film is a gift in its own right.

The film isn’t set in a definitive year, though it seems to be in a time where lynching and protesting were out of style, and casual racism has become the norm. We see the generational divide on the issue between the three males in the central family. [More...]

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