Braving "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

It took a long time for me to warm to the charms of "Beasts of the Southern Wild." First there was the shakeycam, with its vertiginous framing and low-tech aesthetics. Then there was the disjointed narrative, which seemed to keep skipping forward in time. Then there was the setting, an abjectly poor bayou community living south of the Louisiana levies on the fictional Isle de Charles Doucet, referred to by the residents as the Bathtub. And then there were our two primary characters, a little five-year-old African-American girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), living under the haphazard care of her father Wink (Dwight Henry). Mostly she fends for herself as best she can, cooking her own food, minding her assorted pets, and visiting the teacher Miss Bathsheba (Gina Montana). She's the one who tells Hushpuppy about ruthless prehistoric creatures called Aurochs, who are being released from their frozen slumber by the melting icecaps.

Look one way at Hushpuppy's world, and it's all squalor and mud and terrible hygiene. Her rage-prone father doesn't seem quite right in the head, and it's not clear if he's taking care of her, or if she's taking care of him, though Hushpuppy is clearly a small child. She sets her house on fire early on in the film, when she's angry, and for a few minutes it's not clear whether she has more to fear from her father or from the flames. The whole community lives on the brink, even before their existence is threatened by storms and flooding. And yet, if you look at it another way, Hushpuppy's world is one of endless wonders, where the people live closer to nature and are closer in spirit to the beasts themselves. The relationship between Hushpuppy and Wink is as loving as it is fierce, and the fights they have teach Hushpuppy to be strong and self-sufficient. These are lessons that prove necessary to her survival in the Bathtub as the environment begins to change for the worse.

The story is told from Hushpuppy's POV, and has a strong magical realist quality. First time director Benh Zeitlin uses very rough, but evocative imagery, and intermixes events of the past and present, memory and fantasy. Hushpuppy imagines her mother is so beautiful, that water spontaneously boils when she enters a room. Blowing up a levy can somehow drain a flooded area. The Aurochs, who resemble giant boars with extra horns, are as big as elephants and trample everything in their path. Events don't happen in logical order, or follow the usual rules of causality, but the emotions that come with them are very real. Little Quvenzhané Wallis gives a remarkable performance as Hushpuppy, who is such a spark of willful liveliness, she easily carries the film through all its bizarre turns and dreamlike developments. Dwight Henry appalls, terrifies, invigorates, and then reveals his true nature, and will catch you off your guard each time. Neither of the leads are professional actors, and perhaps that's why they come across as so genuine to this particular place and time and culture.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" was made on a miniscule budget of less than $2 million, and considering the sophistication of some of the film's images that doesn't seem possible. There are multiple scenes of storms, of fantasy creatures, and of impossible landscapes. Zeitlin has such a distinct visual sensibility that it's difficult to compare his work to anything else. There have been many stream-of-consciousness films, and many films that have been told from the POV of a child in a difficult situation. However, none have featured a bold, distinctive worldview quite like Hushpuppy's. It's not simply her world that is special, but her understanding of her particular place in it. "Leolo" and Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" have some themes in common, but nothing quite like strangely joyous sense of pride and purpose that "Beasts" achieves in the end, when Hushpuppy figures out how everything fits together.

I reiterate that it took a while for the mood and the tone of the film to really gel for me. It wasn't until Hushpuppy left the Bathtub that I appreciated the wild beauty of the place, and understood why its residents would be so resistant to leaving. And it wasn't until Wink and Hushpuppy were truly facing separation that it became clear how necessary they were to each other. And it wasn't until the closing moments of the film and the very last shot that the themes of environmental destruction, displacement, and community ties really hit home.

I'm not convinced that this is one of the best films of the year, as some have claimed, but it is certainly one of the most original and most promising debuts for everyone involved. And it's far more than it appears to be at first glance.
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