Master of Light

Roger Ebert.com

“It is so complicated to talk about my mom, but she is where my strength comes from. My mother had me when she was sixteen years old, and she was an orphan by the time she was ten. She was the first person to ever love me completely and the first person to ever reject me wholly. We grew up together, so much so that people thought we were brother and sister.”

This is what writer/director Elegance Bratton told me during our recent interview about his achingly personal debut feature, “The Inspection,” which is based on his own experience of discovering his inner strength while serving in the Marine Corps. His sense of worthlessness was instilled in him by his mother, who rejected him after learning he was gay, yet that betrayal did not stop Bratton from loving her or wanting to mend their relationship. He knew that it was the strength she harnessed in order to bring him into the world and care for him, despite all the odds stacked against her, that fueled his own endurance in his journey toward self-acceptance.

His story echoes that of George Anthony Morton, the subject of Rosa Ruth Boesten’s haunting HBO documentary, “Master of Light,” who details how his mother had him at the mere age of fifteen and was like a sister to him. She only knew how to provide for her child by selling drugs, a lifestyle that resulted in George being locked away for over 11 years in federal prison, robbed of the entirety of his twenties for possessing two ounces of crack cocaine. Only years after his release do his siblings inform him that his mother may have in fact set him up to serve time. It’s the sort of betrayal that other films would select as its chief focus, but “Master of Light” is about the rebuilding of a life rather than the destruction of one. As Morton instructs his young nephew, “I am not what has happened to me, but what I choose to become.”