Beasts of the Southern Wild
Before it veers off into abstract surrealism at the end, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is one of the most heartbreaking, and emotionally rich, stories of a child’s rushing into adulthood I’ve ever seen on film. One movie that kept coming to mind was “Nobody Knows,” a Japanese film (based on a true story) about children whose mother is away on business so much that the children must fend for themselves, leading to the oldest one having to grow up much sooner than he should have to. Even with the more “unreal” elements of fantasy near the end, however, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” has enough feeling and soul to rank with the year’s best films.
The key element to the film’s success is the performance of Quvenzhane Wallis, the young girl who plays Hushpuppy, the film’s central character, and narrator. Along with her father (Wink, played by Dwight Henry), Hushpuppy lives in an area on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast called The Bathtub. Just outside of the levees, Hushpuppy and Wink are part of a tight-knit community that lives in deep poverty, but can’t imagine living any other way. They live off the land; use old-fashioned remedies to take care of illnesses; and they watch out for one another during flooding season. This year, that shared love of their way of life is extremely important when the flood takes a significant toll on their existence, and they are almost forced to leave the Bathtub, and go to a shelter center. All the while, tensions between the dominating Wink and the rebellious Hushpuppy are high, and accentuated by Wink’s health issues, and Hushpuppy’s accidental burning down of part of their house. Still, their love and admiration for one another is absolute, and their joy of life in general helps them overcome any obstacle.
Even though the terrain and landscape is impovershed and seemingly devoid of hope for anything better, under the watchful eyes of director Benh Zeitlin and cinematographer Ben Richardson, this is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in a good, long while. Their approach to the film on a visual level owes a lot to Terrence Malick, although thankfully, they avoid the ponderous, laborious tone that hinders a lot of Malick’s work. Several shots and sections of the film will, no doubt, conjour up memories of post-Katrina New Orleans, with people on rooftops and rowing down streets in boats, but Zeitlin doesn’t weigh down his film with the sadness of those images, and instead injects them with a palpable sense of triumph in how these people, who seem to have lived like this for generations, and continue to live successfully without interference from the outside world. This is a crucial part of the film’s success: while we might look in on this way of life from the outside, and pity those who are forced to live this way, by taking the journey that we do with Hushpuppy, Wink, and the rest of their friends, we get a sense of how they have managed to look past possessions, and past the things we take for granted, and have built a life that yes, is not without risks, but ultimately, one that be be profoundly rewarding, and worth living.
It’s curious how it’s the level of reality Zeitlin (who wrote the screenplay, based on one of her plays, with Lucy Alibar) that won me over completely about this film, while it’s attempts at a sort of grounded fairy tale storytelling (namely, in Hushpuppy’s visions of larger-than-life wild boars, symbolizing– to her –the “beasts” she and her fellow Bathtubbers consider themselves to be) seem to do disservice to the film. Of course, Zeitlin is creating such imagery to enhance the film’s emotional impact (as well as the quest for self-actualization Hushpuppy, played by a transcendant Wallis), but I feel, in thinking about the film afterwards, that Zeitlin didn’t need to do that in order for the film to hit us right in our hearts. By not shying away from the reality of its character’s lives, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” manages that just fine.
