Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

I FINALLY got around to seeing Sundance and Cannes indie hit Beasts of the Southern Wild, a swampy backwoods folk tale made on a shoestring budget by first-time director Benh Zeitlin and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors in the Lake Charles, Louisiana area. That's the problem with not being in NY or LA - you have to wait centuries before an indie movie comes to your area. Only three more weeks til I'm back at school though. Alas, here's my take on the film.

Hushpuppy on her daddy's makeshift boat

One of the most important things I learned about cinema was taught to me by a film professor named Drew Casper. He said that the purpose of cinema is to transport you to another world and place you in a life, a person, a story that you have never seen or experienced before. Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, to me, fits this description beautifully. The film is pure magic, like watching poetry on screen. Cinema, among other things, should be just that - a visual representation of a feeling or thought. Never in my life have I seen this represented so perfectly than when watching this film.

I won't tell you anything about the plot, because it's best if you go into this without knowing anything about it, which is what I did and was truly astounded and surprised by every moment. The film transports you to a community completely cut off from the rest of society, called "The Bathtub" after having been flooded by the construction of a levy to protect the civilized societies from storms. The film's two leads, a little girl named Hushpuppy and her brutish yet loving father Wink, are played beautifully by nonprofessionals Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry, respectfully.

Wallis is especially brilliant as the film's soulful protagonist, a folk hero raised virtually in the wild who must come to terms with both her father's terminal illness and the ever-changing world around her as The Bathtub becomes subject to overflooding, decay, and the arrival of mythical beasts called Aurochs. These beasts, frozen in ice for thousands of years, have reappeared as a result of the melting of the polar ice caps. A testament to man's effect on nature, the beasts serve as a cautionary consequence of human carelessness and ignorance towards the natural balance of the universe.

Hushpuppy faces an Auroch head on in one of the best moments of the film

If this review seems like a stream-of-consciousness musing on an impossibly complex theme, it's only because this is exactly what Beasts is: a poetic collage of images, words, and sounds that have no straightforward narrative. The film is an absolute mystery in the best way possible - I waited three days after seeing it to write this review because that's how long it took me to really process it. There's so much that Zetilin leaves open to interpretation that each scene and image can be analyzed differently depending on who you ask. Needless to say, the film is ripe with beautiful and haunting moments - Hushpuppy running towards us with sparklers in her hands, facing and ultimately humbling the enormous Aurochs, learning how to catch a fish with her bare hands.

This review, lengthy as it is, still doesn't do the film justice. All I can say is see the film without any knowledge of the plot and let it transport you to another world, a world of magic and poetry and true wonder. The cinematography is gorgeously grimy, the art direction immaculately detailed (it could almost be considered a character of its own in the film), the performances so natural and real that you don't even realize you're watching a film. Hushpuppy's voice-over narration is filled with poetic musings and childlike wonder, and Wink serves as nature incarnate: tough and unforgiving and untamed, but nonetheless nurturing and fiercely protective.

Hushpuppy and Wink

Truly the most original film I have ever had the pleasure of seeing, Beasts is something that is nearly impossible to describe in words. If the goal of cinema is to place the viewer in another world and speak to the human experience, then this film more than accomplishes it. A modern-day folk tale with more imagination in 91 minutes than any other work of art I've seen in my lifetime, Beasts of the Southern Wild proves that great American movies, like the titular Aurochs, are not completely extinct.