Beasts of the Southern Wild

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I do not consider myself unsophisticated. I appreciate the works of Cocteau, Bunuel, Fellini, even Ionesco. But I am certain that incomprehensibility does not equal art. I cannot express how truly bad this was. The characters had no development, no motivation for their action, and spoke dialogue so random as to make me wonder if my hearing was going. Technically the picture quality was abut that you would expect of a $100 digital camera and the 'arty' scene composition was about the kind of thing you might get by giving a 3-year old a videocam- wildly shaky with lots of closeups of peoples shoulders, butts, and random floorboards. The plot (as it were) had very disturbing flashes of child abuse, mixed messages about alcohol abuse and prostitution and a very weird segment posing aide workers trying to help starving, sick, and drowning people in the role of as some kind of evil aliens. Oh yeah, there was some kind of eco-message and a little very bad magical realism thrown is to make us all feel like were in the same philosophical boat as the idiotic characters. The sad thing is what a waste of potential this was. It has a wonderful child actor and a good cast in general. They get a couple of stars. The rest should be dealt with like a horse with a broken leg.

A third of the way into this thing I told my companion that I'd bet money it was directed by some kid from New York out of film school who obviously did not grow up in the South and doesn't really know the South. Apparently i was correct. The picture is a bluff. Shallow, phony, underdeveloped characters. A lot of pretentious symbolism, shaky camera, and very annoying, distancing music (third rate Phllip Glass stuff, courtesy of the director). It strives for something in the vein of Terence Malick, I guess. Less than halfway through I didn't really care. A very long ninety minutes, only for the gullible. I'm a big fan of the kind of film this one pretends to be. I love Cassavetes and Malick and embrace all manner of cinema, from pulp to classic noir to art house and foreign cinema going back to the Silent Era. But I kinda hate this phony little movie. Even the little girl's performance is being highly overrated by those easily impressed and amused out there. You've been warned .

I just don't get it. I see Beasts of the Southern Wild as a total romanticizing of alcoholism, child abuse and debauchery. I give it a three only because HushPuppy is a great character and, yeah, the kid is a great actress or at the least, totally enchanting. And, yes, the dirt, squalor, and chaos is as dirty, "squalorous", and chaotic as it can be. But, hey, these drunks are portrayed as great partyers, healers, survivalists, individualists, lovable eccentrics, black and white living in loving tolerance, etc., so forget that they are abusive, self-destructive, irresponsible and so on. I know alcoholics. They are not great people. Mostly, they are self-centered boors, at least when under the influence, as these folks constantly are. Booze does not build character or actually much of anything but problems for the drinkers themselves and for their friends and family. I just don't get it, not since Hollywood's early days has drinking been so outlandishly romanticized. I have spent most of my life on the margins. So I like films about marginal people. I am one. But that does not mean I can't tell right from wrong. This does not past muster. Just as a last thought, I get it that someone is trying to tell the story of these hidden people beyond the margins of society. I understand that there is a cajun culture, which produced, among other things, great zaideco music, distinctive cooking, a unique bayou community, etc. I understand they have their own unique code of living. And I understand that romanticizing dead drunk bayou alchies misses the boat(or Tub).

This movie is unbelievable in that it makes poor people appear dirty and stupid. What an incredible insult to those who live in poor rural parts of the country. As a pastor I work with a number of poor and uneducated individuals and I do not find them to be stupid or dirty. In addition, those who live "close to the earth" know how to care for themselves, hunt, fish, build homes and care for their families. They are intelligent in ways the intelligentsia knows nothing about. Have some respect for others outside your circle. Please. Examples? A boat made from the back of the pickup truck; houses that look like they were built by severely brain damaged architects, no idea how to use a fishing pole, everyone filthy, everyone drunk, and...everyone incredible stupid. I could not finish the movie because I felt sorry for the actors. I grew up poor and lived among the poor and there was a common rule among us all and that was "it is OK to be poor but there must be something wrong if you are dirty." Save you money...respect the poor.

Every year, the critics seem to fall in love with one horribly overrated film. Last year it was "The Artist," a derivative tale filmed in the long-defunct style of a silent movie. At least "The Artist" won points for capturing a certain style of filmmaking, but this year's candidate for most pretentious and overrated film, "The Beasts of the Southern Wild," almost defies description. Anyway, I'll try. Don't expect any attempt here to create characters that have any relation to real people. "Beasts" is designed to enter the realm of myth. We're taken to a mythical land dubbed "The Bathtub," a Louisiana Bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a levee. The houses (if you can call them that), appear to be nothing more than ramshackle shelters, in what appears to be a post-Katrina environment. Almost every critic seems to be taken in by the youngest actor ever to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar: six-year-old (now nine) Quevenzhané Wallis. Wallis (in the role of "Hushpuppy") really should be nominated for best acting in a horror film as she plays an emotionally distant, pyromaniac who is the victim of child abuse on the part of her father, Wink, who actually slaps the child, causing her to fall violently to the ground. If you can believe this, the rambunctious Hushpuppy retaliates in kind, by striking Wink, who briefly appears to lose consciousness. Director Benh Zeitlin attempts to mitigate Wink's violent demeanor, by depicting him as some kind of "tough love" saint, who saves the child through a raging Katrina-like storm, after constructing a floating shelter out of flood debris. At one point, Crazy Wink fends off the storm by shooting at the clouds, reassuring the now scared child. Later, he hatches an ill-advised plan to drain salt water brought in by the storm surge, by dynamiting the levee. The bottom line is that Zeitlin wants it both ways: Wink is both a violent child abuser but underneath, a self-sacrificing and devoted father. How touching! If this isn't ridiculous enough, the townspeople are all dysfunctional with drinking problems. After everyone is evacuated by FEMA-like stooges, Hushpuppy's comrades all make a beeline back to their ruined, condemned community. These salt of the earth are particularly good at sucking the heads of craw-fish. David Edelstein in New York Magazine puts it best when describing the denizens of the mythical Bathtub: "Late in the film, Hushpuppy's surrogate family is absurdly romanticized, their drunken dysfunction ennobled, as if living below sea level puts you on a higher spiritual plane." Don't ask me to explain the meaning of the actual "beasts" of the film's title. In the beginning of the film, we learn that melting polar ice caps are releasing prehistoric creatures called "Aurochs." During a screening, I learned that a separate camera crew took ten days to film five-month-old pigs dressed up with horns, to suggest giant wild boars. Hushpuppy later bonds with the creatures after she returns to the "Bathtub" with a coterie of inebriated allies. Wouldn't you know it that Wink has contracted a terminal illness and Hushpuppy is there for a grand send-off at the funeral pyre. That, dear friends, is "Beasts of the Southern Wild" in a nutshell. Everyone turns out to be wonderful in the end, including the former child abuser but now lovable (but terminally ill), Wink. And no one (including government "fiends") can stop the wonderful salt of the earth from getting back to their roots in the Bathtub, including the oh so lovable but hyperactive Hushpuppy. This time, it's Sundance that must take principal responsibility for releasing this drivel to the world. On the other hand, every festival can't be perfect. Let's forgive Sundance for this misstep and pray they don't make the same mistake when next year's festival rolls around.

I just can't get over that others actually like this movie and think it's award worthy. Let's see: terrible direction, ugly visuals, bad performances (including now Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis), boring, dull, dreary. I've read all these glowing reviews and wonder why I seem to live in another universe? I LOVE MOVIES, but there is a particular type of movie I despise, best exemplified by this one and "Winter's Bone", that are ugly and dull. The film is SLOW. The characters are caricatures and stereotypes. The use and abuse of animals is problematic. Benh Zeitlin does a very poor job of directing, with scenes meandering and boring me to distraction. I love independent films: when they are made well and interesting. I am simply stupefied by the reactions I have read to this film. Everybody is entitled to their opinions and I have mine.

Blew away a screening room of industry professionals at the Producers' Guild New York. Far more interesting than the publicity and most published reviews. It's intensely visual, in a way that I associate with visual masterpieces like Avatar. It's a world of 9 year old girl Hushpuppies and her neighbors and friends in a Louisiana Bayou. They are poor in a way most of us never have to face, incredibly spirited, and far more complicated characters than commonly met in film. They are constantly surprising us in what they do, where they go, and what their world looks like. Quvenzhané Wallis is only nine years old, never acted before, and gives a performance worthy of an Oscar. She's never acted before, but Benh Zeitlin drew an amazing performance from her. The actors all come alive, as does the world they are filmed in. the aurochs are also remarkable.

I watched this film carefully, twice. Apparently, liberal reviewers got caught up in the notion of a "natural, mixed-ethnic local community" in Katrina-land and concentrated on the themes of community, family, and the triumph of "naturalness" over "modernity." These are important themes, if dealt with in a coherent, sensitive, intelligent fashion. However, this film offers none of these qualities. In giving the film high ratings, many reviewers ignored the film's countless flaws and negative aspects, including idiotic (at times phony-mystical) dialogue, acceptance of child abuse, alcohol abuse, and sheer stupidity, glorification of prostitution, and romanticizing pervasive squalor. A key moment of "triumph" in the film involves the filthy, ragtag assortment of characters physically assaulting a group of public health workers who are trying to assist them. I ask any New York Limousine Liberal reviewer who found this mess to be "uplifting" to answer the following -- would you allow any of the central characters in this film to reside in your apartment building? (Of course they would not.) Oh --- the central character is a very graceful and beautiful young child actress, Quvenzhané Wallis. Her main "acting" consists of grimacing at the camera. I found her to be more puzzling than convincing, and (literally) she has about one-tenth the acting chops of Dakota Fanning at the same age, who did more with her eyes alone in any one minute on camera than Miss Wallis does in the entire movie. Standing there looking sullen when you are supposed to be experiencing a run of emotion is not acting, no matter how adorable you are.