Hedlund plays Mike Burden, a young man in a small South Carolina town who has been raised in a culture of hate by a leader of the KKK named Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson, giving a nuanced portrayal of how much evil can look like the average guy next door). Griffin and his gang of easily manipulated yes-boys are opening a Redneck KKK Museum in an old theater when “Burden” starts, which sends the community into an uproar and turns up the fire under always-simmering racial tensions. Reverend Kennedy (Forest Whitaker) unites his congregation against the move, but preaches compassion and understanding, even for your enemies.
While this is happening across town, a love story brews between Mike and a single mother named Judy (Andrea Riseborough), who also happens to be friends with one of Burden’s childhood pals, Clarence (Usher Raymond). Judy is startled when she learns that Mike is involved with the KKK, and Riseborough is very good in these early scenes of confusion. She conveys a lot of conflict without much melodrama, capturing the difficult decision of a woman who finally finds what she thinks is a decent, supportive man, only to learn he’s a virulent racist. And she starts to chip away at his beliefs, challenging Tom’s teachings, until the dam breaks.
In a series of events that apparently really happened, Mike ends up in the Reverend’s home, where he’s finally taught compassion and empathy for everyone. In these scenes, “Burden” goes farthest astray because Kennedy and his family become almost entirely plot devices for Burden’s arc. Imagine the story told in reverse—from, say, the perspective of Kennedy’s son, who has to balance his trust in his father and God’s teachings against a man in his house who he knows is a monster. How far would his compassion go? This is barely explored in this cut of “Burden” (which is a little shorter than what played Sundance), and the section in which Mike and Judy go from homeless to living under the roof of a man that Burden almost killed earlier in the film feels rushed and thin.
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