[Trailer] Burden: Forest Whitaker, Usher Tackle Racial Tensions In KKK Movie

In the film Burden, the Ku Klux Klan opens a small museum in a South Carolina town. The idealistic Reverend Kennedy (Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker) resolves to do everything in his power to prevent long-simmering racial tensions from boiling over. But the members of Kennedy’s congregation are shocked to discover that his plan includes sheltering Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund), a Klansman whose relationships with both a single-mother (Andrea Riseborough) and a high-school friend (Usher Raymond) force him to re-examine his long-held beliefs.

After Kennedy helps Mike leave behind his violent past, the Baptist preacher finds himself on a collision course with manipulative KKK leader Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson). In the face of grave threats to himself and his family, the resolute Kennedy bravely pursues a path toward peace, setting aside his own misgivings in the hopes of healing his wounded community.

“The weapons that we use to fight fear. They’re not brutality. They are not wrath. They are not hate! They are and will always be love,” Kennedy says.

“Burden” has empathy for the economics and self-esteem issues that make poor, white, angry Americans prone to stand on other people’s necks to feel taller. Call it, “Trump Voter Thinkpiece: The Movie.” To be clear, “Burden” isn’t saying Klan members are good people. Heckler also observes the systematic indignities the town’s black population endures: the suspicious store clerks, casual insults, and the callousness that keeps residents like Clarence (Usher Raymond) from getting an equal break. The Klan’s cruelties are even worse. For kicks, the guys pile into a pickup and urinate on a black woman trying to walk home. Heckler keeps the camera on the innocent woman’s face as the truck speeds away, and her sobs make us shiver with guilt just for watching. Mike is violent and does things audiences can call unforgivable — but the ability to forgive, and to ask for forgiveness, is part of what the film wants to examine.

Meanwhile, the reverend struggles to convince his wife (Crystal R. Fox) and son (Dexter Darden) to open their hearts to men like Mike. He’s trying to model himself like a modern-day Martin Luther King Jr., leading peace rallies outside the museum where his churchgoers chant, “Pump, pump it up!” (Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” was more hip in 1996.) The character teeters on the edge of sainthood, but Heckler does what he can to make him human. Lecturing his family on civil rights at home, Whitaker’s voice slips into a grand-standing sermon — sanctimony his annoyed family has clearly endured at too many dinners. Another time, he’s so exhausted from holding in repressed anger, he sits in his car and screams.

Burden, based on a true story, Tess Harper and Crystal Fox also star in the film from writer and director Andrew Heckler. The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award.

Burden premieres in theaters on February 28, 2020.

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