Movie: Beasts of
the Southern Wild
My Rating: 3
stars
This was a confusing, but beautiful, little film. I’m really having a hard time knowing what to
make of it. Is it a film about
community? Or personal values? Is it an anthropological study, training an
eye on a dying way of life, neither romanticizing, nor denigrating it? Or, is this film just an exercise in
disorienting, dreamlike aesthetics? It
very well could be any of these things.
For some reason, I had a really hard time figuring out the point of view
of the filmmaker, Benh Zeitlin.
There isn’t much of a story in this film. The action follows the aimless wanderings of
a little girl, Hushpuppy, as she goes about all of her wild, little girl
business. She lives in a small,
fictional, shantytown near New Orleans called The Bathtub. Hushpuppy lives a pretty much entirely
unsupervised life, so she does a lot of poking and prodding and investigating
of various things in nature, her home, and only occasionally, school. She lives with her dad, but he doesn’t seem
to be a very reliable roommate. This guy
comes and goes as freely as Hushpuppy herself.
So, she is essentially left to herself to examine and make sense of the
world. The Bathtub is a rough and
untamed enclave, and this little girl lives an almost feral kind of existence. The cinematography makes everything look
dreamy and magical, but the movie did feel a little bit sad to me too. Hushpuppy seems particularly starved for
affection. She seems to want nothing
more than to just be held and taken care of by a loving adult. And, that seems to be the hardest thing for
her to find. It’s a little bit
heartbreaking.
So, I think I did like this film, even though I’m completely
confused by it. It’s not very often that
we get to see stories about deeply sad little children. We don’t usually like to think about that
kind of thing in society today. People
usually prefer to think of kids as happy and innocent, and carefree. We even seem to prefer seeing them as victims
of terrible crimes in tragic films.
Somehow, a story about a melancholy, world-weary, little person going
about her sad, everyday business is deeply unsettling to our Western
sensibilities. And so, it’s not
something we get to see very often. I
enjoyed seeing these new ideas expressed on film, and you might too. But, I think it would be best to approach
this film without any expectations.
5 comments:
You characterize the film well (community? personal values? anthropological study, a dying way of life? an exercise in disorienting, dreamlike aesthetics?) , and I agree it is a hard to figure out Zeitlin’s POV. Perhaps he has no single viewpoint, but I find it hard to think he has no agenda. Yes, it is good to the new ideas of “a story about a melancholy, world-weary, little person going about her sad, everyday business,” but again, it did not enthrall me.
I go to movies with the game-plan of, “You pays your money (and time) and takes your chances.” Sadly, this film did not work for me. Again, in this instance, you are more generous with your stars than I.
Yes, I remember you telling me what you thought about this one too. I guess I'm programmed to automatically like most movies. That's usually my default. A movie usually has to be pretty awful for me to dislike it.
I disliked this movie, but my interpretation of the message was something like this: The people of The Bathtub are supposed to be mankind in a very basic state. People are, in essence, "beasts" who have to rely on their own strength and courage to get by when civilization and technology doesn't save them.
Interesting. Yeah, I can see how that interpretation would apply to the film. I guess I found a little consolation in the beautiful visuals, so I found something to enjoy. But, I definitely didn't connect with the story at all.
I think I'm programmed to like most movies too. I loved Beasts, and since I was taking it metaphorically instead of literally, I really enjoyed it as something original and differerant that everything else out there.
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