Beasts of the Southern Wild is a rare film, startling in the originality of its concept and execution. It’s a child’s story, largely shot at the proverbial grasshopper’s height, but there’s nothing cloying or cliché. The protagonist is a six-year old black girl called Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhane Wallis), living in a mixed-race, dirt-poor settlement in the bayou outside New Orleans. The claps of thunder heard from the onset signal a storm on the way, and the apocalyptic mood is verbalized by one of the village women, who speaks of melting icecaps and rising seas, warning the children: “You’all better learn how to survive.” Hushpuppy will need all her survival skills when a storm flood rushes over her settlement, carrying everyone away on rafts.
Hollywood seldom points its cameras at places like Hushpuppy’s home, where pigs and dogs run loose with the chickens, mud covers the slippery ground and rust has eaten into every metal surface. And it has seldom approached the empathy of director Benh Zeitlin (who co-wrote with Lucy Alibar) for his pre-adolescent subject. The film fully enters an imaginative world where Hushpuppy’s dead mother calls to her and prehistoric beasts roam the swamps. The girl’s narrative voice tells the story and remains matter of fact in the face of catastrophe, fantastic occurrences and the inevitable confusion of the adult world. Beasts of the Southern Wild is out on DVD and Blu-ray.
