On Beasts of the Southern Wild

I’ve lived in the South for most of my life. I was born in New Orleans, lived in Texas for 11 years (yes, it is part of the South, don’t sass me), and attend school in North Carolina. My mom is from Louisiana, my dad is from Arkansas, and nearly my entire extended family is scattered somewhere along the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, there’s something about the standard Southern identity that I don’t possess that makes people think I’m not from there. My lack of an accent, my distaste for seafood, my vote for Barack Obama in the last election. Maybe I just don’t say “y’all” enough. Who knows?

But I do know this: you don’t just have to be a Southerner to enjoy Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s stunning debut feature. In the film, Zeitlin paints a gorgeous picture of rural Louisiana and its inhabitants. We see the town known to the locals simply as The Bathtub through the eyes of Hushpuppy, a young girl living with her father Wink, her mother having left some time ago. As she and the rest of The Bathtub’s citizens weather a devastating hurricane that leaves them all stuck floating on top of several feet of water, Zeitlin lets us watch as Hushpuppy matures through the ordeal, at a few times against her will.

The film is spellbinding. From powerhouse performances by newcomers Quevenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry to the captivating score - which Zeitlin also helped create - to the mesmerizing visuals of the decadent decay that permeates The Bathtub, I couldn’t have imagined a more entertaining first festival film to watch. At the post-screening Q&A, Dwight Henry said that he believes this film is about resilience; how even in the face of immense strife, something about the South breeds its denizens to be hardy individuals. While the characters in Beasts sometimes make decisions that seem more foolhardy than hardy, I agree with Henry. Zeitlin’s film shows the lengths that people will go to in order to protect their way of life in a thrilling fashion, and by allowing Hushpuppy to be the lens through which we see all of this, her innocence and growing understanding keep the film’s emotional core in the right place. Sure, the writing can get gimmicky at times, and the plot gets a little muddled at points, but I would certainly label Beasts as a great film and one that I wholeheartedly recommend should it find a distributor.