Mo' Movies Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

A..... post-Katrina Uncle Remus Joseph Campbell hero’s journey Norse saga Terry Gilliam magical realism Eco-apocalyptic fable- ALL on a po’boy bun! You’ll need more than two hands to handle THIS whopper. Sure, it’s a tall tale but the really big whopper is the inscrutable swooning gushing forth from the main stream critics (Ebert, the Times A. O. Scott) who seemed to have succumbed to some unseen siren’s call and crashed themselves blissfully on the rocks of delirium. Read their reviews with wary mind and a syringe of insulin.

Like most, I read the glowing reviews and on the face of it, this is an interesting and seemingly original tale. Especially compared to the tripe churning from Hollywood’s loins these days. But drilling down past the sentimentality, the precocious young girl actress who seems to have bewitched all, a heart of darkness engulfs and the sweetness sours. There is something just wrong with this film.

Briefly:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Hush Puppy who lived with her Daddy in a place called the Bathtub. It existed on the wrong side of a levee in the Louisiana Bayou where any major storm could come along and the ocean would reclaim it for its own. Folk were poor, living off whatever the sea would provide: food, money from what they could catch and sell, the flotsam and jetsam providing material for shelter. Different races lived side by side in harmony, solidarity and independence from the outside world-that which existed on the other side of the levee. Unlike those outsiders who celebrated but once a year, the Bathtub denizens partied often, with glee and gusto, drink and food aplenty. Hush Puppy was wise beyond her years, knowing that everything in the universe is connected. She was taught in school that an Eco-Apocalypse was coming and she imagined that the Auroch-a long-extinct gigantic hog- like creature, would thaw out and come to destroy the weak, like her. Her daddy was a rough man but he meant to teach his heir apparent to be self-reliant and tough for, alas, he was ill. A big storm came and nearly destroyed the Bathtub, first with water but later with salt-poisoning from the invading ocean. Men from the Bathtub lead by Daddy, dynamited a hole in the levee to let the ocean out of their land. The government discovered that there were people still out in the Bathtub and forced them to evacuate “for their own good.”

Ok. At this point, you’re thinking-oh, such an Eden. Such joyous humans. Such fierce independent beings. Bad, Bad government. And such a bright little girl. What an imagination on that little peeler!

But wait. Let’s have a reality check. Daddy is a violent man. A violent man. If he isn’t physically hitting Hush Puppy, he is yelling at her, demeaning her. In fact, he talks like he is disappointed she is not a boy. He constantly says “hey, man” to her, “you're gonna be the king one day” and refers to her in male terminology. Only when he demeans her-to scold her, he finally acknowledges her gender-”oh you are just a weak little girl”. In his mind, he is being tough to make her tough in that uneducated, trash logic. The denizens of the Bathtub are not the brightest. Drunk much of the time. Living in incredible squalor. Yet the film tries to romanticize this in the most egregious of White attitudes: the noble savage. A.O. Scott of the Times even tries to tag them with a Libertarian label because they ran out of the shelters in an imagined act of declining government help. Noooo. They don’t have a clue what Libertarian means. Their act was not political, it was the act of near feral beings who were running back to reclaim that scrap of land that they considered theirs.

Ebert and Scott, didn’t you get the title? BEASTS of the Southern Wilds refers to the humans as much as to the critters.  And it ain’t a compliment. C’mon now. What do these people do? What are their concerns? Hush Puppy gives the clue when she talks about critters: “they just be eatin' and shittin'”. I would add fucking and drinking. How do they solve problems? Daddy doesn’t call up the UN. No, his default is violence. His kid sasses him, he smacks her. The authorities mess up his land, he blows a hole in the dike. The hurricane comes to destroy his stuff, he shoots at it with a shotgun.

You want to go down the stereotype lane? OK, what the director/writers have done here is portray yet again the big, bad ass nigger. Angry, aggressive, animal-like in his demeanor and his desires. Women are only sexual objects-his wife seen through his eyes as hot hot hot. Hell, she sets shit on fire when she walks past.

More objectionable is the sexualization of Hush Puppy and her girl pals. Late in the film, she decides to look for her mama. They take off swimming and are picked up by a tug and are taken to a floating whorehouse. The women there are shown to be the stereotypical whores with the hearts of gold-cooing, lavishing the young girls with attention supposedly because they haven’t seen children, only men for sooo long. Yet, in the dancing scene, they hold the young girls like lovers not children. Very creepy.

And what of Hush Puppy? Abandoned by her mama, hurt and demeaned by her daddy and now he is dead. Does anyone actually think she is ok? Has she learned enough lessons to survive? In the real world, no. But the film tries to make her out as the queen apparent of the Bathtub, ready to rule.

The inclusion of the Aurochs-silly. Yeah it gives the cache of weirdness and mysticism to the film. They bow down to the big bad girl/queen of the Bathtub. Pretty obvious these guys have watched Terry Gilliam. And, it throws in another dash of pet Liberalism the film makers seem to exude-Al Gore's Global Warming.

Worse, sending Daddy off in his flaming truck/boat to join the relatives in Bathtub Valhalla, while the mourners recite Bathtub tribal liturgy made me cringe for the pretentiousness of it all. Oh please.

I’ll give the crew who made this film their due: they crafted a good looking film on a shoestring budget. On the extras reel you can see how they created the illusions and again, well done there. But frankly, what was it that made the critics swoon? Original? Compared to the recent Zombie/Vampirethons, the endless remakes and mining of Marvel Comics,well, yes it is. But it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny which I feel the mainstream critics failed to do or chose not to. I can only recommend this for those who want to see what the hoopla was about.

Bin was disturbed by the Aurochs and decided to give the whole film a pass. He muttered something about them being vaguely familiar and disappeared for the afternoon to hang out in his safe place under the evergreens.

Feel like comparing films? Watch Terry Gilliam's Tideland. Yep, it has a creep factor and he caught a huge rash of pillorying from many critics for….sexualization of a young girl. Take a look at his fable telling and compare. Look at his visuals. Beasts pales in comparison. Warning, it’s a tough film with a tough subject matter. But afterward, wonder as I did how the director of Beasts got a pass and Gilliam did not. Why Beasts was gushed over, nominated for a boatload of Academy Awards and Gilliam had tomatoes thrown at him.

For a blistering review, strap yourself in and read bell hooks's thoughts on this film. Now, she has been and continues to be quite the uncompromising bomb thrower of the feminist movement's radical wing. Having said this, I found her take on this film evocative and I found several times that she expressed what I was feeling but unable to put my finger on.