Dear Friends,
I am heartbroken. I left the theater completely heartbroken. Beasts of the Southern Wild was the most artistically fulfilling (for me) of all of the Oscar nominees that I have seen so far. It was absolutely thrilling to see a piece that seamlessly merged fantasy and reality the way Beasts of the Southern Wild did. This deeply human story was intensely personal, yet (for me) completely un-relatable; so much so that I felt I was watching a film about a foreign realm, like Harry Potter or The Neverending Story. And it was amazing.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is technically a “fantasy drama” directed by Benh Zeitlin, and written by Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar. It was actually adapted from Alibar’s one act play Juicy and Delicious. You can bet that I’m dying to see that play now! Beasts of the Southern Wild is now nominated for four Academy Awards. It is the story about a southern Louisiana community called the Bathtub, and it follows the story of Hushpuppy and her father Wink. We first are privy to their unique familial bond, as well as their fascinating community life. We hear as they do, through the town gossip, that a major storm is coming through, and most of the members of the community are leaving. They, and a few intrepid others (I can’t tell if they’re brave or just plain stupid) decide to stay, that nothing is going to drive them out of the Bathtub. Needless to say, the earth is flooded. At the same time, the frozen icecaps in the Arctic are melting, and have released prehistoric beasts called Aurochs that are making their way across the planet. We watch as Wink and his friends put together a misfit home for all those orphaned by the storm, and figure out how to get the water to go down, in order to save their homes from the flood. The well-meaning Red Cross, or some equally benevolent organization, discovers them, and they are taken from the homes they have fought to keep and put in a shelter.
Dwight Henry plays Wink, Hushpuppy’s alcoholic and slightly abusive father. Wink is a complex man, one who is teaching his child to grow up the best way he knows how. Normally, with any other movie, I’d peg him as the villain of the movie, and at the beginning I did, but Wink is actually the heart of this movie, as we watch him struggle to keep himself and his daughter alive. The complexity of his character is stunning. In some moments, I want child services to swoop in and take his daughter from him, and in others, I’m sobbing for this heroic man who wants to do the right thing. And Quvenzhane Wallis, the youngest Academy Award nominee in the history of the awards, is one of the most beguiling children I think I’ve ever seen on screen. Most of her dialogue comes through voiceover, and it colors the entire film with the sentiments, assumptions, and knowledge of a five-year-old girl. Which means it was hilarious, nonsensical, and deeply moving all simultaneously. I commend the writers- it’s not easy to write in the voice of a child. There was a short period of time where I was assuming Wallis wrote the movie herself. (Clearly logic means nothing to me, only art.)
What makes this film so completely glorious is the complex depiction of a community I can’t even begin to understand. From beginning to end, almost nothing made sense to me. I felt like a foreign anthropologist, studying a culture that didn’t know they were being watched. So many behaviors that shocked me were apparently completely normal, like being drunk for most of the day, and making completely reckless and impulsive decisions with seemingly no regard for oneself or one’s family. Maybe that was just a character thing, but at any given point I think every adult in charge of a child became completely selfish, and practically yelled to the universe, “I can do what I want!” I was also overwhelmed by the depiction of the “saviors”, the people that saved The Bathtub from itself. At least, that’s always how I imagined government services. They ride in with money and supplies, and save the day. At least for Wink and Hushpuppy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Regardless of the fact that they lived in filth and had nothing to eat, they wanted to stay in their homes. All of the illusions I once held about doing the “right thing” were gone, washed away with everything else that was lost in this film.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is a beautiful depiction of a life I don’t understand, and I’m so very, very glad I had the opportunity to see this movie. It was monstrously heartbreaking and unfair, but there is a heartbeat of courage and pride that never stops, and it motors this community on in the face of disaster.
I hope that this movie wins the Academy Award for best picture, for its unflinching storytelling and heartfelt acting. Go and see it. It’s worth a few tears.
Live, Love, Learn,