Beasts of the
Southern Wild
Directed By: Benh
Zeitlin
Written By: Lucy
Alibar and Benh Zeitlin
Starring: Quvenzhane
Wallis, Dwight Henry
Director of Photography: Ben Richardson, Editors: Crockett
Doob and Affonso Gocalves, Production Designer: Alex DiGerlando, Original
Music: Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin
After the
first ten minutes of the Sundance smash Beasts
of the Southern Wild, I was ready to flee from the theater. Set in an area
of Southern Louisiana called “the Bathtub,” the film quickly introduces us to
our protagonist Hushpuppy, who says lines about how all the universe is
connected. Her home is a grassy plain filled with trash and animals and full of
characters who speak with pride about an us vs. them mentality. The director
Benh Zeitlin fills the palate with intense non-linear shots that confuse the
viewer into astonishment, not to mention the overbearing score. Oh God, what
have I walked into? Yes, Beasts is
not your typical Sundance film—there’s no mumbling, no digital video, and no
20-somethings attempting to figure out what to do with their trust-funded lives—but
damn, I thought, is that precociousness and sense of wonder going to feel like
my head being slammed against the wall.
But then, I
gave in, and accepted Zeitlin’s film on its own terms: a fairy tale, and an
imaginative one at that, set as a coming of age story in a part of Americana
rarely explored on film. Beasts never
quite won me over—the amount of tears pouring from my fellow audience was quite
a contrast to my dry face—but its earnestness and exploration of familial
relationship centered itself.
But wait!
How can someone just like this film?
Either you must be over the moon, calling it one
of the best films to ever play at Sundance, or as Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
prefers, “bullshit.”
To not love this film is to reveal that you are a callous and cynical critic
who can’t accept a film for its given premises and to not hate it is to reveal
you are a sucker for fraudulent cinematic techniques. There has been too much
digital ink poured over Beasts of the
Southern Wild that it almost feels like discussions are no longer about the
film. Tim
Grierson writes at Deadspin that Beasts is a “model independent film,”
which means the problems of Beasts
must stand for the entirety of filmmaking outside of Hollywood (and you thought
Lena Dunham had it bad!).
