Review: An unlikely friendship is at the heart of 'Burden'

It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling to adapt the real-life events surrounding a museum in South Carolina that celebrated the Ku Klux Klan.

The museum opened in the mid-1990s, prompting protests. One of the Klansmen eventually had a change of heart and hands the deed to the museum to the leader of the protesters, a black preacher, who has offered the man grace and forgiveness.

Now in a further poetic turn that a scriptwriter couldn't get away with, an agent of civil rights owns the space of hatred, and the two men become friends. What has changed in the Klansman? Would you believe the love of a good woman?

Hollywood has indeed come calling with “ Burden,” the strange tale of Mike Burden. Writer and director Andrew Heckler has managed to make a powerful film, if not a very subtle one. It's frightening that we still need films about the KKK these days.

Garrett Hedlund plays Burden as a rumpled husk of a human, all jerky, janky, angular movements. His Burden is a heavy-lidded, coiled adolescent man-boy who spits tobacco and seems forever ill-at-ease. He recalls a young Dennis Quaid mixed with Christian Bale. “I can't go back because I don't want to,” he mumbles.

Andrea Riseborough, a British actress, is absolutely transformed into the role of Burden's girlfriend, using the simplest of gestures to convey complicated feelings. Forest Whitaker as the Rev. David Kennedy turns in yet another performance in which anguish and strain push down his shoulders and shoot out of his eyes. Usher, in a small role, is pretty good, too, and Tom Wilkinson, as the local king of the racists, is chilling.

The town leaders of Laurens, South Carolina, might want to miss sitting through this film. There are racists everywhere — cross-burning, N-word tossing, physically assaulting good ol' boys — all in...