Login
There’s a phenomenon that seem to happen every year around summer time – amidst all the strum und drag of the cacophonous summer movie season, a tiny indie film gets released that captures the hearts of critics, audiences and awards season. It started off with Little Miss Sunshine, and it continues with the exquisite miniature portraiture of Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Typically the sleeper indie hit of the summer is a comedy, but Beasts of the Southern Wild is more of a southern magical realist drama concerning one little girl’s relationship with her father, her community and the vivid imaginative landscape she creates when things become too much. The plot, a bare thing around which is draped some of the finest cinematic garnishing, ebbs and flows and less in common with narrative momentum and everything to do with moving poetry.
This little girl, dubbed Hushpuppy, experiences an elemental, practically cosmic, connection with all things in the Bathtub, the nickname of the small fishing-ghetto the residents live in. The film begins with her listening to the heartbeats of the various animals scattered around her farm, at six she is already searching for how things are interconnected. Her presence is that of someone both ageless and older than her years, a spectral encounter with a world far removed from ours, yet familiar in details.
This interior life, which frequently takes fanciful flights as she imagines aurochs coming to devour her whole, what they could metaphorically represent could be any number of things and the film gives us enough details to make cases for any of them, is beautifully constructed by Quvenzhané Wallis. Her scowl is born from hardships in the film, and she manages to project a toughness and strength beyond the capacity for a normal grade-schooler. Her smile is charismatic and beaming, but it’s the scream she unleashes that proves most endearing. A high-pitched warrior call, like a mini-Valkyrie roaring into battle, which she wields to reassert her dominance or to make her fears subside. Wallis, a first-time actress, is a marvelous find, and will hopefully have a long and full career ahead of her.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a touching and tough little gem hidden away between the latest comic book adaptations and soulless Michael Bay exercises in vulgarity. The grit and grace are authentically rendered and felt, and it’s shocking to think that this comes from a first-time filmmaker. There’s much talent, heart, imagination and artistry on display in this film, and I am grateful for it being pointed out to me as something worth watching.
