Beasts of the Southern Wild Review

Every year, there are a handful of really great movies, and when we're lucky, perhaps a masterpiece or two.  Even so, movies rarely rise to that rarefied status of being something truly unique, a vision so singular, so exciting, so vital, that it feels like something more than a great movie, more than a masterpiece.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is just such a movie.  Debut writer-director Benh Zeitlen has woven a gritty, beautiful fairy tale from the frayed threads of Katrina, exploring themes of death, loss, community, and strength through a most stunning voice: that of a six year-old girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis).

Every frame of Beasts of the Southern Wild is magic.  The Bathtub is a fully realized world, a community built on the old adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure," every building a mosaic of materials, aged, rusty, bursting with character.  Truck beds become boats, cardboard boxes are used to record history, and sheets of metal clang in the worsening storm, a far more frightening alarm than the cleverly rigged dinner bell.

The secondhand world is a paradise to Hushpuppy, so eager to explore, raised by tough love that has acclimated her to a harsh, often unforgiving environment.  She has her own house, she's eager to be a man (whether through burping or arm wrestling), and she easily crosses between the natural and barely-constructed worlds, straddling the blurred line and feeling at ease in both.  She's a folk hero, a historian, a child who can never know innocence, reflected in the ever-muddy state of her white rain boots.

But a character is only as good as the actor or actress behind them, so it's lucky that Zeitlen found such an amazing screen presence in newcomer Wallis.  She is perfect in the role, giving Hushpuppy the wisdom that growing up in such a strange place inevitably breeds, but tinging it with a ceaseless curiosity as she listens to the heartbeats of the animals, and the world, around her.  Wallis is adorable but emotes toughness as if it were nothing, bringing equal gravity to her lighter moments and the more serious fare Hushpuppy faces, ranging from her father's decaying state to the arrival of dangerous ancient beasts called aurochs, recently freed from the melting icecaps.  (Spoiler alert: they look awesome.)

Cinematographer Ben Richardson's camera brilliantly captures the experience of childhood in the Bathtub; it is Hushpuppy's match: restless, curious, eager to take in the small details, alert to the wonders of the natural world, the starkness of the drowning world, the desperation of the world as it emerges from underwater, barely alive, much of it not.  It's not unlike Emmanuel Lubezki's work in The Tree of Life last year.  Richardson similarly brings the experience of childhood to the forefront, with all the unexpected magic and inevitable darkness that entails.

This darkness is embodied by Wink (Dwight Henry), Hushpuppy's single father who loves her with an edge, bullies her into toughness, and protects her animalistically.  Henry is another revelation, managing to make Wink loveable and understandable, even when his parenting becomes a bit too mean.  Beasts is at its best when Henry and Wallis share the screen; their chemistry is natural, truly familial, and their final scene together is in itself a work of magic, one part in the vast tapestry that contributes to such a thrilling, breathtaking whole.

Indeed, it's hard to single out each element of the film that deserves praise, so finely wrought is the picture as a whole.  Each shot is gorgeous to look at and deeply felt, a marriage of style and substance that impresses and penetrates.  The score, which Zeitlen composed with Dan Romer, bursts with character and unbridled joy, resulting in swells akin to Sufjan Stevens' work.  The screenplay, which Zeitlen cowrote with Lucy Alibar, is heavy on narration, but it's an appropriate reliance, as the film operates as a folktale, one that will be retold and celebrated for years to come.  I suspect that each time, it will feel new, and that the magic will never fade.