Beasts of the Southern Wild is a strong drink for fans of pure unadulterated cinema. The strength of the human spirit, the irrepressible bond between a father and daughter, and the cycle of life and death itself are the themes of this unforgettable Katrina fable starring the stunning Quvenzayne Wallis. Wallis, all of six years old during the filming, beat out 4000 girls who’d answered flyers announcing the lead role of Hushpuppy. (Still five and displaying the same moxie she does in the film, she lied about her age to qualify, then completely blew away the producers in the audition). Most of the actors, including Wallis, hadn’t previously acted a day in their lives.
The film has no conventional plot and needs none. Its style blends the movie’s many powerful and often colorful elements into a film equivalent of a John Coltrane jazz ensemble. It outdoes the similarly abstract Tree of Life for emotional depth by presenting a more grounded vision of the human condition while somehow capturing both the joie de vivre of the Delta lifestyle with the wring-your-hands desperation of victims of Katrina. We get to know Hushpuppy and her dad, Wink, in a visceral, intimate way. They are real people set against the in-your-face backdrop of the mythopoetic “Bathtub” (a 9th Ward-like downtrodden area), not the impressionistic sketches of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain in Tree of Life. Yet both films afford us a rare glimpse into the eternal questions.
Can you say Oscar and Quvenzayne in the same breath? She’d be the youngest nominee ever, yet I can’t think of a performance in years that so utterly sideswiped me. Her screen presence seems at times eerily unearthly. Judging from interviews, apparently her uncanny instincts led the director Benh Zeitlin as much as she was led by him. Equally impressive, Dwight Henry (in real life a New Orleans bakery owner) portrays Wink by drawing from his own experience in surviving many hurricanes while raising three kids of his own.
Hushpuppy and Wink fight the elements, their rescuers, and each other while ensconced in a shack on stilts or floating on a vessel made of a truck bed and oil drums. Their community, defiant and self-reliant, strut their resolve through music and merriment as some of them, refusing to relocate despite the impending storm, turn their houses into arks. Hushpuppy, who often speaks to animals in code, calls The Bathtub “the prettiest place on earth.” Quite aside from her efforts at self-preservation, she provides the film’s moral compass as well as its innocent victim. Her focus and bravery are unparalleled.
Winner of the Palm d’or at Cannes and Best Film at Sundance, Beasts of the Southern Wild, shot on Super 16, is a technical marvel from the lush shots from cinematographer Ben Richardson to the rich yet delicate score composed by Dan Romer and Zeitlin. The 29-year-old Zeitlin’s first feature is a one-of-a-kind wonder that will surprise, charm and confound you. It may even, and I don’t say this lightly, make you swell with pride at the power of cinema to transform our self awareness.
5 Hushpuppies (out of 5)