Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Director: Benh Zeitlin

 The American independent movie has become a genre unto itself. They're usually comedic films with some drama mixed, stylistically bare and low-key, and usually starring young 20-something year old people dealing with "relatable" human issues that speak to the modern day. But here comes Beasts of the Southern Wild to give American independent cinema a jolt of life. It's a film filled with magical realism and a folksy but lyrical tone. It's set in a island off the coast of Louisiana in a small community with no connection to the outside world. They are self-sufficient and proud of it. Our lead character is actually the opposite of the cultured, privileged, whiney college graduate whose trying to learn how to function in the world that we see in so many American independent films. Our lead character is Hushpuppy, a six-year-old girl who is learning to come to terms with how nature works. It's a coming-of-age story, only the person who is coming of age is only six years old.

When stripped from the lyrical camerawork, the historic mythology, and the cultural tics the film is essentially about the spirit of individualism and a celebration of independence. It can be construed as a libertarian movie, but even if you're not a libertarian the film will still ring true because the independence of the characters comes from a distrust of others that I think all of us can understand. People leave us, whether it's voluntarily or through death, and we all need to get used to that just as Hushpuppy learns. While the movie never explicitly references Hurricane Katrina it does call back to it quite obviously and the effects that it had on the people who called that area home for so many years. The movie humanizes those who stay behind with their homes during a hurricane, because it emphasizes the importance of a place called home, especially in a community that gets no support from the outside world. As you can tell there's a whole lot of allegorical analysis that can be done with this film, but I still believe that the reason this film is powerful is because of the journey of Hushpuppy as little girl trying to make sense of the world. Beasts of the Southern Wild does something that should be impossible. It combines childhood imagination and naivete with the very adult qualities of responsibility and independence.

Grade: A-