Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Burden’ On Showtime, A Well-Intentioned Racist Redemption Drama That Falls Flat

Ah, the white savior trope; we’ve seen it time and time again in flicks like The Help, The Blind Side, Freedom Writers, The Soloist, Green Book, and more. It’s exhausting to watch play out over and over again, and equally exhausting to watch white storytellers continue to try to tell stories about race. The latest on this list is Burden, now streaming on Showtime. While it may not present the stereotype in the way we’ve become accustomed to, it still shows us that progress isn’t really happening. 

BURDEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: 1996, Laurens, South Carolina. Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund) is a man of few words, one who spends his days working as a repo man alongside his buddy Clint and spends his nights burning crosses and donning a hood. Yep, he was raised in the Ku Klux Klan; thanks to the teachings of father figure Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson), Mike is a virulent racist, and he’s dedicated to helping Tom open up “The Redneck KKK Museum” right in the middle of town. This museum/shop comes as deeply upsetting news to Reverend David Kennedy (Forest Whitaker), who begins staging peaceful protests outside the museum. Things start to get heated, but Reverend Kennedy urges the community to stay peaceful.

Mike seems content – if slightly uncomfortable – in his existence, and this discomfort is only exacerbated when he falls in love with Judy (Andrea Riseborough), a single mom who makes him start questioning his life as a racist klansman. When he leaves Tom and the group behind for Judy, they lose everything; their home, their jobs, his car. They’re taken in by Reverend Kennedy, who, though struggling with his own feelings about it all, helps Mike begin to change.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Burden will likely bring to mind the aforementioned flicks, as well as recent racist redemption stories like Green Book and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Performance Worth Watching: Andrea Riseborough can do pretty much anything, and her performance in Burden is no exception. Her role may be one we’ve seen before – the good woman sent to save the soul of the misguided man – but she does moving things with it, saying more with glances and gentle touches than she ever really does with words. Riseborough pops up in just about everything everything these days, and it’s easy to see why. She’s a total force.

Memorable Dialogue: This line is spoken by Judy early on in the film when she first meets Mike (and he’s about to repo her TV), but I couldn’t help but feel like it could be applied to other characters in the film, too: “Sometimes I think, how much we gotta lose before we got nothing left?”

Sex and Skin: A few tender kisses between Mike and Judy, but not much else.

Our Take: Burden‘s biggest mistake is the lens it chooses to tell its story through; in focusing on Mike and his family of racists, it tells a story we’ve all seen before, an exhausted one that puts the pressure on Black people to show these racists the errors of their ways. I went into the film pretty blind about the whole thing and was genuinely surprised after the first few scenes when it was revealed what space they were working on. There’s something to be said for making clear that racists and bigots are your neighbors and people hiding (or not hiding) in plain sight – Tom Wilkinson’s excellent performance is proof of this – but creating a sense of empathy for these people and then hearing vile slurs come out of their mouths is more than a little jarring. It all feels a bit off-balance, lending a lot of screen time to characters we’ve seen over and over for decades rather than telling the more interesting story – Reverend Kennedy’s story.

In making Reverend Kennedy a secondary character, Burden misses out on being more than just another racist redemption story. The better film puts Whitaker at its center, further highlighting the, well, burden of doing what he did. Reverend Kennedy is infinitely more interesting than Mike Burden, simultaneously juggling his home relationships, his reputation, and his own personal feelings about the racist living under his roof. Perhaps it’s because this is yet another story about race told by a white filmmaker, but Burden simply feels like a rehashing of themes we’ve seen before, with a healthy dose of Southern poverty porn. And we’re also somehow not meant to question the fact that Judy stays with Mike despite his Klan ties, which feels strange. He says he’s left that all behind for her, but she seemed willing to stand by his side either way. It just doesn’t sit right.

This all isn’t to say there aren’t great moments in Burden; Hedlund and Riseborough do some wonderful, moving work together, and Whitaker is definitely in top form. And the movie is definitely watchable and occasionally resonant. Despite this, however, the middle part of the film and all the plot and character developments feel so thin that it feels like there’s some unrealized potential for all of the performers, through no fault of their own. If Burden had a better understanding of the bigger picture and was willing to answer some of the questions it asks, it would be a much better film, one I’d enthusiastically recommend. Unfortunately, this is not that movie.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While the film is well-intentioned and Whitaker, Hedlund, and Riseborough turn in strong performances, Burden stumbles in choosing to put its spotlight on the wrong character.

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines and harboring dad-aged celebrity crushes. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.

Where to Stream Burden