Beasts of the Southern Wild - Review

Beasts of the
Drama
93 minutes


Rated: PG-13 for thematic material including child imperilment, some disturbing images, language and brief sensuality
Grade: C-


Director: Benh Zeitlin

Writers: Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin

Stars: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry and Levy Easterly | See full cast and crew

The film won the Caméra d'Or award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered.

Now I enjoy a good independent film free of the trappings of the major motion picture studios, but 'so called Art Films' are most certainly a hit and miss proposition.

I went to this film wanting to like it. After having seen some promos and reading some praise form Film Critics I had expectations of an, original, innovative and provocative Art House type film. Lamentably, it's a pretty safe bet that when a film is proclaimed as 'important and meaningful to our times' it is advisable not to run to see it but to run away from a wasted hour or two.

Filmmaker Benh Zeitlen makes his directorial debut with “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, which was heaped with honor and acclaim at the recent Sundance Film Festival and The Cannes Film Festival. Even so, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it will be a compelling, watchable film. The trailer (take a look here),

featuring ' a child star is born' Quvenzhane Wallace, certainly leaves the impression that this just might be one of those hits...well, not so much. There is a lot less here than meets the eye. In my opinion, the fawning and praise that this unremarkable film has received is wholly unwarranted. Sort of like the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded Barak Hussein Obama...unearned (awarded with the expectation that he would earn it). These 'enlightened' Sundance and Cannes film critics are like a bunch of posers in a modern art gallery droning on and on with their over loud narrative to their friends on how they 'get it' when looking at a blank canvas. They can tell you all about what you are unable to see in that rectangle of nothingness. They can write pages if not volumes about the social relevance of that blank canvas. The ever present retelling of the fable of 'The Emperor's New Clothes'.

The film was shot on 16mm, and director Benh Zeitlin created the production with a small professional crew, and with dozens of local residents in and around Montegut, Louisiana. The filmmakers collective calls themselves "Court 13" and are the first credited at the end of the film. Considering the limited budget Zeitlin has gotten a lot bang out of his dollars.

This is how the Plot as delivered in official promos (Note how the story is romanticized and reality is ignored):

Hushpuppy, a fearless six-year-old girl, lives with her father (in separate houses), Wink, in "the Bathtub", a southern Delta community at the edge of the world (a swampy island in the Mississippi delta). Wink's tough love (aka child abuse where he shares hard liquor the six year old, repeatedly tells her to 'shut up', tells her she is stupid, curses at her and smacks her in the face when she annoys him) prepares her for the unraveling of the universe (Say what?); for a time when he's no longer there to protect her (or for when he dies and she is left an orphan, surely that has universal implications). When Wink contracts a mysterious illness (more likely than not brought on by his alcoholism), nature flies out of whack (now there's some logical causation), temperatures rise (why?), and the ice caps melt (but of course they do, makes total sense), unleashing an army (since when does 5 constitute an army) of prehistoric creatures called aurochs (never mind that these predecessors of modern day cattle are portrayed in this film by dressed up Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pigs or that they mysteriously come to life after thawing out from chunks of polar ice that have miraculously drifted from the pole to the bayou). With the waters rising (read man-caused global warming environmentalist propaganda), the aurochs coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother (whom she finds in a whorehouse or at least you are to assume that it is her mother).

I read one review that called Beasts of the Southern Wild as the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close of hurricane Katrina. I can see the analogy but one of the two films was Extremely Good and Incredibly Well Executed.

 

The movie comes across as a collective of competing themes that collide more often than complement, it never fully gels.

Young mister Zeitlin's effort has ambitious intentions, and I commend him for that, however he misses the mark. He has done well with the casting of two unknowns for the roles of Hushpuppy and Wink. They both do excellent jobs with what they have been given. I couldn't help but see Quvenzhane as a black Shirley Temple Black (pun intended). She is cute, sweet, very likeable and she doesn't come across as 'acting', but the sappy, annoying, philosophical, claptrap, sophistry that she is called on to deliver as narration is painful to sit through and may put you to sleep. With his use of incessant narration to portray a six-year-old as a prolix sage, Mr. Zeitlin can't help slipping into syurpy sentimentality. Eventually it lumbers on to a predictable close.

I actually found myself a couple of times with my eyes closed daydreaming about other things. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd started snoring because, like Hushpuppy in the photo below, I was all alone. I was literally the only one in the theater!  

Film Critic Rex Reed (New York Observer) opines:

Don't miss this one. A brave and inspired antidote to time-wasting mainstream movies, it is unlike anything you've seen before or will likely ever see again. In short, it is unforgettable. (Really, I saw the film less that 12 hours ago and I'm already forgetting it as I write this.)

Dana Stevens (Slate) is more in line with my opinion:

Beasts of the Southern Wild

It’s nothing if not original. But that doesn’t mean it’s good.

Zeitlin's adoring gaze on the Bathtubbers' chaotic-yet-joyous way of life smacks of anthropological voyeurism: Rousseau's "noble savage" nonsense all over again, but with crawdads and zydeco.

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