Deliverance

Still, the acting skills of P. Diddy will pale as a topic of conversation next to the film‘s galvanizing sex scene. Unlike movies in which the sex seems apart from everything else -- a specially lit, choreographed anomaly -- Monster’s Ball pivots on the power of Hank and Leticia‘s explosive late-night first fuck. Anger, desire, insanity, death and love swirl around the graphic, extended sequence, and to secure Berry’s commitment to acting it with total freedom, Forster gave her final approval of the edit. ”At the end of the day, it‘s her onscreen and not me,“ he says. ”Because basically she exposes her soul, her most private, inner secrets. If she’s willing to go there, I have to be willing to grant her that.“

Forster‘s concession paid off: Berry let loose on camera and later approved his cut. The ratings board, however, saw NC-17. So Forster -- who, with his open face, thin frame and unfailingly polite demeanor, seems to radiate goodwill -- set out to work with the MPAA to get an R rating that satisfied both him and the board. ”They’re very generous, I think,“ he reports. Not that each successive trim, related mostly to thrusts per shot, didn‘t take its toll. By the seventh edit, recalls Forster, ”I thought, ’If they‘re not going to approve it, I will get painfully sick. It would lose the power of the scene.’ Then they saw and approved it, and I was so happy.“

Forster hasn‘t developed any illusions yet about the future. It’s safe to say he‘ll have most actors begging to work with him, and he’s helped to keep alive a long-standing tradition in Hollywood, that of foreign-born-and-raised directors training an unbiased eye on American society‘s dreams and failings, and slapping us awake with their visions. Forster, however, only modestly plays the world-citizen card. He stresses that Monster’s Ball -- while visually and psychologically attuned to Southern life -- is an emotional road map that transcends territory. When he says, ”Human beings all over the world need to be loved,“ it‘s not so canned: You sense that Hank and Leticia are so real to him that only the most irony-free platitude will do. Nevertheless, he adds, ”I couldn’t make a film about Swiss people. I‘m very judgmental. I think I know them, but I probably don’t.“