Beasts of the Southern Wild

Looking back on Beasts of the Southern Wild, the best way I can describe it is that it's a fairy tale of the old school variety, not the Disney kind. The movie concerns Hushpuppy, a six year-old girl who lives on an island called The Bathtub which lies somewhere off the gulf coast of Louisiana. Hushpuppy's mother is dead and so she lives with her father, Wink. The Bathtub is cut off from the mainland forcing its residents to live in fairly primitive conditions with people living in dilapidated houses and scrounging what they can. The sea provides food. But the people of the Bathtub are a happy bunch. They understand their separation from the rest of civilization but celebrate their home as an arcadia as we see in a montage featuring a parade and everyone running around with fireworks. "The Bathtub has more holidays than the whole rest of the world," says Hushpuppy in a voiceover.

Like all good fairy tales our young protagonist leads a less than happy existence. While she says that she likes The Bathtub, Wink is not an ideal father. We see him cooking dinner for Hushpuppy but they live in separate shacks and Wink doesn't seem to want to have a whole lot to do with his daughter. Ergo Hushpuppy spends her days roaming the island, listening to the heartbeats of animals as well as attending a makeshift school. Their relationship is perhaps summarized in a scene where Hushpuppy starts a fire in her shack and hides underneath a box in the living room. Although Wink comes to rescue her, his shouts betray much more anger than concern for his little girl.

One day at the school the teacher reveals a tattoo on her leg of some ancient people hunting aurochs, giant boar-like animals. When word gets around that a big storm is coming, Hushpuppy envisions a melting polar ice cap with frozen aurochs waiting to be thawed out. Wink prepares a raft made from the bed of a pickup truck to weather the storm which will likely food The Bathtub. After the storm has passed, the pair traverses The Bathtub looking for fellow survivors. As Wink teaches his daughter self-sufficiency, we learn that he has a mysterious illness.

I feel very ambivalent about Wink. As his illness progresses, he becomes easier to pity yet he treats his own daughter so horribly. Rather than trying to go out on a high note and be a compassionate father, Wink tries to hustle her off to adulthood several years too early. He cares for Hushpuppy yet the only thing he cares to do in preparation for his demise is to make her more masculine and/or toughen her up. Perhaps he thinks that treating her like crap will make her more resilient to the trials and tribulations of life. In one scene they are at a tavern eating crabs. When someone attempts to show Hushpuppy how to get the meat out of the shell, Wink explodes and directs his rage at Hushpuppy. She should learn to crack the crab open with her bare hands instead of using a more "civilized" technique. Everyone cheers her on and, upon ripping a crab in half, she climbs onto the table and flexes her biceps. It seems like the only way Wink can communicate with Hushpuppy is by yelling at her whether it be criticism or praise. In another scene Wink tells Hushpuppy about her mother but he does so as if he is talking to a friend at the bar. He describes what a nice ass she had, for example. Wink just can't see his daughter for what she is.

Upon reflection, Hushpuppy is a less interesting character than at first sight. She certainly provokes empathy and her relationship to nature and as a part of it are interesting but it felt wasted to me. After the flood The remaining residents of The Bathtub are rescued – even if they don't want to be – by disaster relief authorities and are brought to the mainland. They plot to escape although Wink dies before he can do so. This leaves Hushpuppy on her own. After her initial sadness, she doesn't seem particularly distraught although she does attach herself to a woman who is a cook at a strip club/bar and gets a few tender moments of pseudo-maternal bliss. At the end, though, Hushpuppy is back in The Bathtub marching through the receding flood waters to await the next storm.

I feel that Jeliza-Rose from Tideland was a more interesting character as far as abandoned girls go. Too much of Beasts of the Southern Wild is spent reinforcing the notion that Wink is an asshole and thusly too little is spent developing Hushpuppy and showing the changes wrought in her by her circumstances. The return of the aurochs from their frozen slumbers was wonderful both visually and metaphorically but it was too late by then. The movie had wasted too much time on Wink. It would have been more interesting had more time been devoted to Hushpuppy's internal world. We get glimpses of it but they're always disturbed by Wink being pissed off.

Nature is a motif here and I liked what the story did with it, although I do wish it had done more. The denizens of The Bathtub more or less live in harmony with it. Perhaps it is more correct to say they have a detente with it. The refineries and levees across the sea represent evil. Hushpuppy has an interesting relationship to nature. In addition to living in The Bathtub, we see her listening to the heartbeat of animals on multiple occasions. Wink says at one point, "My only purpose in life is to teach her how to make it." He seems to view life in something akin to Hobbesian terms and the crab eating scene reflects that. Hushpuppy takes on that view because of her father's behavior. But she also is a child and so mixes reality and fantasy in her head. Thusly nature begins to reflect her feelings. In one scene, storm clouds brew after she fights with and hits her father. Nature as conflict. However, after her journey, she comes to see a larger picture. "I see that I am a little piece of a big, big universe, and that makes it right," her narration intones.

Both Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry deserve praise for their performances here as neither is a professional actor. The filmmakers also get high marks for the sets which they apparently constructed around areas of Louisiana that hadn't recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Aside from my criticism of the story, I have to say that I wish cinematographer Ben Richardson had used a tripod. Most of the movie was done hand-held so most shots are jittery. The effect wasn't as headache-inducing as Blair Witch Project but I didn't see the point. But I suppose it works with the story's desire to keep us from learning too much about Hushpuppy. You don't need a tripod to hear the anger in Wink's voice but all that camera movement detracted from getting a good look at the characters' faces and trying to discern something. Give me a static shot to ponder, please.