Geekscape Movie Reviews: “Beasts Of The Southern Wild”
Beasts of The Southern Wild is the film that has taken both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals by storm. It won the Grand Jury Prize as well as the Excellence in Cinematography Award at Sundance and won the Camera d’Or (Best First Film) at Cannes. After seeing this film it’s easy to see why it’s been winning these awards and why it’s the talk of the town. It is truly an original film and unlike anything I’ve seen in quite sometime. It poetic and mystifying all in one. I’ll be honest, up until a few weeks ago it was a movie I had never heard of, but then I saw the trailer for it and I was hooked. Now I’ve seen the film and I’ve been ranting about it to anyone who will listen.
It tells the tale of six-year-old Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis), who lives with her father Wink (another newcomer Dwight Henry) in The Bathtub, a bayou community that is cut off from the rest of the world by a levee. Young Hushpuppy believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe but when a hurricane devastates the world she knows she will do everything in her power to save her sickly father and their sinking home.
The film is told from the vantage-point of Hushpuppy and we experience everything from her perspective. Her world is not our world but we get to become part of it through her eyes and it’s quite a sight to be seen. Young Quvenzhané Wallis, who was only six when this was made gives an amazing performance, especially considering the fact that she had absolutely zero acting experience prior to this film. Her performance as Hushpuppy is what drives this film, she is the soul of this. Director Benh Zeitlin said that “she’s the moral backbone (in the film), even though everyone else is older. She always does the right thing, and never wavers” and that it was Quvenzhané’s “incredibly strong sense of right and wrong” that she brought to the character. A quality that wasn’t there prior to her being cast. “She is really wise beyond her years and really fearless and strong in this way. When I saw I sorta knew that was the character and that’s who she was gonna be.”
Dwight Henry is equally incredible in his role as Wink, Hushpuppy’s tough yet loving father. Mr. Henry as it turns out, runs a bakery in Louisiana that was across the street from where auditions were being held. He met the casting agents when they asked if they could pass out flyers in his bakery and they asked him if he wanted to audition. So, he sent in an audition tape and everyone was taken by him, but when they tried to reach him they found it nearly impossible to find him. As it turns out, this was due to the fact that they were trying to reach him in the afternoon, but being a baker he worked midnight to noon and was asleep when they were trying to get a hold of him. Once he was cast in the role, Zeitlin would discuss the character with Henry from 2am -5am as he baked. They would discuss his character and shape Wink into a character that more closely embodied Henry’s fearlessness and perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances. These are traits that really come out when you watch the film. Wink is a harsh character and his relationship with Hushpuppy is at times difficult to watch but as the film progresses you realize that there is a reasoning for the way he acts towards his daughter. He does what he must to teach his daughter how fend for herself and how to survive in a world without her father.
Enough credit can’t be given to Benh Zeitlin, director and co-writer on the film. Here he has crafted a truly remarkable film that makes you connect with these characters and their strength and fierceness despite the harshness of the world around them. He gets phenomenal performances out of the cast. He has also crafted a place that is so incredibly new yet hauntingly familiar at the same time. This is a director’s movie for sure and he can hear his voice coming through in the form of Hushpuppy throughout. He takes us on a journey in the film and has fashioned something strange and wonderful. It’s almost as if you’re reading a poem when you see this. That sentiment may sound incredibly hokie and sure it sort of is, but that’s honestly the way I felt as I watched this piece of art.
This is a film that’s as far from the Hollywood standard as you can get. It certainly won’t appeal to everyone who sees it, but it is something that I strong urge everyone to see and experience it for yourself. In a summer that’s littered with the likes of Battleship and Rock of Ages, I think you owe it to yourselves to see a movie that has something original to say and isn’t just thrown together to make a quick buck. See this movie, I can’t urge you enough.
Beasts of The Southern Wild opens in limited release on June 27.
Score: 4.5/5
