Movie Review: 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'

Score: 5/5
by Brian Kesler

Benh Zeitlin is a newcomer to the directorial world of film, but you wouldn't know it from his beautiful work in 'Beasts of the Southern Wild.' The film is more of a visceral poem than a narrative, really. A film that explores our connection with nature, with each other, and the struggle of all living things to survive.

Our avatar to exploring these concepts is the remarkable Hushpuppy, a five-year-old girl living in a bayou community whose will to survive - emotionally and physically - is remarkable. The performance by the Oscar nominated Quvenzhane Wallis (who breaks a record for youngest nominee ever) strikes a chord in the soul. We follow Hushpuppy as she finds her place in her community, in her family, and in nature. Hushpuppy grabs chickens, crabs, and anything that has blood flowing through its body, puts the animals to her ear, and listens to the mysterious thumping within. She learns from her school teacher how to care for those around her, and she learns from her experiences with her isolated and polarizing father how to take care of herself.

The polar ice caps are melting, and they threaten to flood this swap land and all that live there. Trapped within the ice caps are ancient beasts who once had dominance over all other living things, but went extinct during the ice age. As the ice breaks apart, these beasts float - all the way from the Arctic - to the shores of Hushpuppy's home. As the lands flood, Hushpuppy and her daddy live with a small group of people on a boat. The beasts are released from the ice and roam the wild, looking for humans to consume. The ice that created extinction for so many animals, now threatens the extinction of mankind by melting.

Hushpuppy is a strong little girl. She likes to hear stories of her mama, and arm wrestle with her daddy. She likes to eat with her hands and show off her "guns." She doesn't cry - her daddy won't let her. She has the power to control her own destiny and doesn't put that to waste. She understands the perpetual doom of her own extinction and tries to make an impact on her surroundings, so that one day when "future scientists" are there, they'll know "once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy." This culminates in a climactic scene where the ancient beasts charge toward little Hushpuppy, and she stands her ground against them.

Hushpuppy's understanding of life is that it is one giant food chain. She witnesses things being consumed by bigger things, sometimes existentially. She sees her father being consumed by disease and her home being consumed by floods. She understands that in nature, everything has its place, and her place is at the whim of mother earth. If she be consumed by the storm, it's because the storm is higher up on the food chain. As her own extinction looms ever forward, however, she begins trying to survive against the will of nature. When she's confronted by the beasts, she doesn't try to harm them, and they don't try to harm her. They leave each other alone, allowing for their mutual survival and symbolically challenging, perhaps I'm reaching for it here, social Darwinism.

It's always great to try to find some higher purpose for the imagery of a film, but the key to this movie is to just let it pass over you. Like I said, the movie is not so much an intellectual narrative as it is a visceral poem. It floods the soul with feelings drawn out of images and sounds. What does the image of a wild little girl pressing a chicken's heart to her ear say to you? How does that image make you feel? Stanley Kubrick made his entire career out of searching for the perfect composition of images, not to make a statement, but to present an emotion or idea in the most effective way possible. The image of Hushpuppy next to the intimidating, extinct auroch doesn't have to have a higher purpose. What idea does that image present? How does it make you feel? That's the great power of the cinema.