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Beasts of the Southern Wild2012 | 93 min | PG-13 | 1.85:1
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” requires a special moviegoing mood to embrace. It’s a jittery study of behavior and disaster, anchored by first-time actors and an untested filmmaker, who use a broad understanding of the Hurricane Katrina disaster to fashion their own interpretation of regional pride and the human spirit’s thirst for defiance. It’s often indescribable and occasionally unfocused, though the originality of vision supplied here successfully lubricates a few tiresome moments. To appreciate “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” one must relax their expectations, allowing the feature’s sputtery sense of momentum to generate a feeling of detachment and parental love, communicated in a most unusual manner. 
The town of Bathub lies just outside the Louisiana system of levees, with its sun-baked residents preparing for incoming waters due to global warming. Refusing to abandon their homes, the community is ready for the worst. Making a life for themselves, Wink (Dwight Henry) and his 7-year-old daughter, Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis), live in separate, dilapidated homes, yet share an undeniable connection born out of the father’s fierce need to train his child for doomsday. Discovering he has a terminal illness, Wink carries on as normal, silently fearful that he will abandon his child, yet Hushpuppy is growing as a warrior of the forgotten land, a temperament tested when the ice caps melt and the Bathtub is plunged underwater. Having lost their home, Hushpuppy and Wink tour the area on a makeshift boat, hoping to keep the survivors of Bathtub together to preserve their history as a people, fighting to maintain a future in the face of extinction. Produced on a limited budget, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a rather ambitious production, pushing co-writer/director Benh Zeitlin to manufacture an entire world out of only a handful of locations, populated with amateur actors. It’s an apocalyptic story in many ways, with roots in history, inspired by Katrina troubles and itchy personalities of the bayou, digging into the soggy culture with two hands. Zeitlin is overly reliant on shaky-cam to create a sense of urgency to the piece, but his imagination is difficult to deny, as the film generates a mesmerizing alien landscape right here on Earth, reinforcing the Bathtub’s deliberate exclusion from the rest of the country. Trudging through shacks and swamps, observing violent seafood preparation (Wink urges Hushpuppy to “beast” a crab by cracking it open while alive), and greeting the booze-saturated residents of the land, the feature generates an appreciation of location and the pride of the locals, who refuse to abandon what they’ve built just because they’ve been instructed to do so. 
The feral qualities of the film create a passable sense of mystery, nurtured through Hushpuppy’s narration, listening to the child make sense of her father, the riddle of her absent mother, and the work of her daily routine. “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is most confident when searching, allowing young Wallis to observe the confusion of her surroundings, with Zeitlin seizing highlights from the expectedly coached performance. Truly terrific is Henry, bringing fury to the frame as Wink struggles with the realities of life in the Bathtub and his responsibility to his daughter as he grows increasingly ill. The feature feels lived-in and raw, achieving greater dramatic results when locked into exploratory mode, both physically and emotionally. When Zeitlin attempts to tell a story here, the effort tends to drag, unable to stir up a compelling arc of tension to the Bathtub experience that carries for 90 minutes. The movie is best when rolling around the textures of the frame, not trying to generate a thunderous sense of destiny. A bit of the fantastical enters the feature, tracking the movement of a pack of prehistoric creatures thawed from the arctic ice, who stampede across the land. Symbolizing Hushpuppy’s developing authority, the monstrous, enigmatic moments add little to the experience besides a fresh hit of enchanting model work needed to bring enormous scale to these pigs with wigs. 
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is perhaps best left as a story of love between a father and daughter, fighting remarkable challenges to remain a family unit while the elements conspire to keep them apart. It’s an emotional beat diluted by the feature’s iffy focus, but the basic squeeze of hurt remains, keeping the tale in the vicinity of vulnerability, allowing entrance into this strange picture. Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis Director: Benh Zeitlin » See full cast & crew |
 
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