Beasts of the Southern Wild

I can understand how most people view this film within the context of Hurricane Katrina. But even as a former denizen of the Gulf coast who sat out Alicia, Claudette, Allen, Rita, and Ike, I view this film in a much, much larger context. It goes beyond stereotype and into archetype -- the denizens of the Bathtub aren't poor drunks at the mercy of the environment, they are The People of the world they inhabit. Hushpuppy doesn't have a drunk father, she has a Father, with many of the faults and strengths of the immortal epic heroes -- anger, pride, genuine love and concern. Hushpuppy herself isn't just a little girl, she is The Child -- the purveyor of a magic which is real, intimately connected with her world, imaginatively linked with All Things. The outside world is a place of Things and Machines, of paperwork and rules -- and is never actually named, you see, because that would diminish it. Everything in this film exists within the realm of archetype, and if you watch it with that in mind, its multiple messages take on cosmic significance. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted -- it's going to take a few more days for the entire thing to completely sink in. Outstanding!

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

An engrossing, vigorous, fanciful, primal movie set in Southern Louisiana in time of flood and strife. It's about the power of people to survive. It's a celebration of animal behavior. It's about community and loneliness. There are echoes of ourselves in all these people in their craziness or compassion, or their uneducated wisdom (or lack of wisdom which then depends on luck and instinct).

In short it's quite a ride, and the leading character is a little girl who now is up for an Academy Award nomination for best actress, with the only question about that being the weirdly simple and true question--how much is she acting, how much is she just being herself with amazing transparency on the camera? Well, the same could be said of lots of adult actors who are really just themselves over and over, and so you really can watch "Beasts" for the stellar and heartwarming effort by Quvenzhané Wallis.

There are other performances startling for their gritty (or downright filthy) realism, including the girl's father. But these start to intermix and blend into a larger effort involving the elements of wind and rain and flood, unbridled partying, moments of tender caring including some folk wisdom by the teacher and healer of the group, and so on in an up and down, topsy turvy mix.

You can love this movie just for its insider look at a culture that you hardly knew possible in the United States any more, or even in any third world country for its primitivism. It is in fact rather based on truth though ramped up and made sensational and into a kind of fairy tale. There are (in reality) some islands that have communities struggling on the fringes along the complex coastline of Louisiana, and some of them have almost no development, and correspondingly little education and health care. The film was shot on an actual island like this, though it given a fictional name (nicknamed the Bathtub by the characters).

You can also love this movie for its metaphors. If there is misunderstanding and cruelty between father and daughter, there is also a base instinct to stick together and survive. If there is a sense of independence there is also a dependency on neighbors and outsiders. If the world seems out of whack and insane you still find ways to make part of it reasonable, by either makeshift construction or by changing your outlook. And there are those giant boar animals menacing the main character in some kind of dream. This is really about survival in ways that go beyond physical comfort and food.

There is a problem, especially for people who appreciate more sophisticated movies for their plots and their filmmaking savvy, with the generally meandering narrative. The movie is not without ups and downs and an evolving sense of drama. But it depends more on its scene and its characterizations than on what happens with them. Things happen but they don't particularly develop, in the usual sense. You'll be spellbound and maybe even frightened (or according to some reviews, disgusted) by many of the scenes, but you might also start to wonder what it's all leading to. That's the narrative instinct in all of us for a development toward some kind of climax or turning point, and it's not compelling.

So just be immersed. Admire the fact these are amateurs and independents. Click back a few expectations and be surprised by some of the content for its immediacy. Unique and riveting.

First and foremost - to the people who gave 1 or 2 stars:

The movie does not deserve this few stars, don't be silly. The only reason you give 1 or 2 stars is to make the overall rating go lower and to get people to read your review.

Now to the movie:

It tells a very unique magical story while the fantasy part isn't as big as you could assume from the cover. It's more about the little girl Hushpuppy and her dad who live a simple life. There are some beautiful moments and if you give the movie a chance and actually watch it, there's not much to regret since it will take you on a journey worth seeing.

What is so difficult to understand? If we suspend belief for Spiderman, The Hulk and King Kong why can't we believe in this story?

I wonder whether some viewers are so addicted to the rhythm of plot driven movies to render them unable to appreciate a story like this, a story that sees the world through the eyes of a child who knows nothing of what we know. If you are one of those, go read somewhere else. I am not going to give you a synapse but my humble opinion on its meaning and possibly its intent. Or more surely, what I got out of it.

The beauty of this movie lies in Hushpuppy, a child young enough to be nonjudgmental, and her vision of life and its inhabitants. She has her own wisdom and is, like all children, taking things quite literally.

At first the hand-held camera-work and insufficient light-fill to illuminate the deep shades gave me the impression that this was a documentary style movie, a story reporting the lives of a group of people living off the grid in some southern state of the United States. But when I understood that the "Beasts" of the title was not a judgment of the movie's humans and their poverty, their ignorance, their unsophistication- but only an alternate noun for "animals" which the protagonists calls both her pets and humans alike, I started seeing the movie for what it really is: A dream, a fantasy, an imaginary story that merged with the contemporary awareness of global warming, and so a low tech sci-fi prediction of how the world may soon become.

With that key I read most character's actions: the father figure who needs to train his child to survive, inciting her "to show her guns" and be self assured; the woman who teaches children the use of herbs to cure, the meaning of magic and mythology; the tolerance of the other adults for what, in a parallel reality, would definitively been child abuse. All this is righteously done to prepare the children to survive in a world that was(is?) going from merely hard to impossible.

Wink's seemingly unsentimental and insensitive behavior towards the little wee child makes then perfect sense and thus his letting go when she can keep at bay, the Aurochs (a metaphor for her still childlike imagination) and her ability to step out of that world and into that of an adult ("I've got to take care of mine now") is the proof that she had grown up enough to survive on her own.

Looking back to it, this movie is a miracle as improbable as that of La Vita é Bella, where Benigni infused humor in a story about the Holocaust without becoming offensive or demeaning. Beasts of a Southern Wild is able to merge a child's world with that of an adult; to make us see how the effects of global warming will challenge the lives of many; it is a comment and a reminder of Katrina, its victims and consequences; finally it is a poetic way of describing the world and its inhabitants, escaping the ugliness and despair of certain realities by converting it into hope, survival and beauty.

As I said, I thought the film is over-rated, over-hyped, formless, basically plot less, and trite. The father is a mean drunk (who still loves his kid), and the kid is a solemn and wise six year-old. Two stereotypes, wouldn't you say? They live in The Bathtub, a shattered but colorful community on the gulf side of the levee. The community is comprised of other drunk people who also love and care about Hushpuppy, the young girl. Hushpuppy is quite precocious, interested in things that don't usually concern girls of her age: the after-life, ecology, such eternal questions as the meaning of life. She of course loves her mean drunk father and all the furred and feathered creatures that live in their little farmlet. There is an air about the film that is surreal. The characters in their madness are a bit like the characters in Mad Max. They are all over-sized and eminently watchable in their enthusiastic inebriation. But I wished for a few moments of lucidity, where people just talk to each other without ranting and raving. The overall impression that I got is one of sadness. There is very little joy -- other than that which comes from the bottle -- in their lives. This said, I enjoyed the movie. It is very watchable, but in a guilty sort of way. Their lives are painful. It is set in a part of the world that we don't normally see, with people we would generally avoid. Technically it is very well done. The visuals are great. I would recommend seeing it but not attending too much to the surrounding hype.