Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

The depths of the stunning art-house film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" are matched only by those of the rising waters flooding "The Bathtub," a small and impoverished Delta subsection of New Orleans facing Hurricane Katrina.

Though I'll make an attempt, I expect to find myself unable to accurately describe this film of brilliant contrasts. It is a small-budgeted, provincially-shot film of huge emotional scope, and its story is simultaneously as verite as a film can be but with complex (and somewhat confusing) flourishes of the supernatural. And it centers around a relationship between a father and his daughter that is more complex than any family relationship I've seen in a film in quite some time. For all of the things I loved about this film, it's that relationship that gave this movie it's power in my opinion - the thing that kept me so moved and invested and the reason I'd watch the movie again.

The main character of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is 6-year-old Hushpuppy, a spunky and curious little girl who lives with her father Wink in a tin-roof shack seemingly at the edge of the world, but certainly at the very edge of the United States. By all accounts, Hushpuppy (stunningly played by inevitable award-grabber Quvenzhane Wallis) is the focus of the film, but to me, the film is almost more about how Wink (a raw and powerful Dwight Henry) handles his parenting responsibilities in the midst of a crisis.

A huge storm is coming, and word is traveling around the Bathtub, though Wink is one of a core group of its residents who greets the news with indifference and is perhaps even indignant toward the prospect of packing up his belongings and his daughter and evacuating, despite mandatory orders from government officials to do so. It's not that his belongings are plentiful, either. Like their neighbors, Wink's possessions are a menagerie of found items, used and discarded former props in the lives of people financially secure enough to discard them for the latest models. Nothing is wasted in the Bathtub. Oil drums are bound together to make boats, and Hushpuppy reserves a particular fondness for a Michael Jordan jersey, surely a lucky find among the unwanted items that have floated downstream.

The storm does come, of course, and Wink and Hushpuppy stay put. Both are shockingly confident in their abilities to withstand the hurricane, and it's in this arrogance that the film takes off. Hushpuppy narrates the story; Wallis' voiceover work is confident and even cocky in contrast with her youthful delivery. She talks about being remembered years after she's gone. She believes in herself and her dad.

Her dad, though, is not only fighting to keep them alive as the waters rise. He's also fighting to parent his daughter as best he can, though he suffers moments of self-betrayal in which it appears that he has the inclination to kill his own child, or at least abuse her. To a viewer like me, there does appear to be some abuse, at least psychological abuse. But this is why I love the movie - Hushpuppy doesn't receive her dad's words and actions as abusive. And indeed, for every moment where Wink seems like he belongs in the pantheon of worst fathers ever depicted on film, there is a scene that reminds us that all they have is each other and that he really is a loving father in his own, individual way.

Wink is also fighting a mysterious illness, and it seems like every move he makes is calculated to prepare his daughter for life without him. The Bathtub is all they know - so close to the earth that Hushpuppy believes she can communicate with its animal inhabitants. She seems fit to survive, and Wink intends to help her by teaching her how to hand fish and pumping up her confidence with macho bravado, forcing her in one memorable scene to shout back to him on his command: "I'm da man!"

I mentioned a supernatural element earlier, and I'd be lying if I said that this aspect of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" was as clear to me as the film's other aspects. There was a moment when I even wondered if perhaps the film would be better off without "the aurochs," large boar-like creatures of ancient origins that roam the Bathtub and come snout-to-face with Hushpuppy, who in her earth mother-in-training-influence has the ability to calmly interact with them. But in hindsight, I like this element of the film tremendously. I like how open to interpretation it is. I like how a film of cold, horrible, impoverished reality is injected with shots of earthy magic as scene through the eyes of an intrepid, creative child. Calling to mind "Where the Wild Things Are," I was left feeling that the wild rumpus starts with Hushpuppy.

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott rightfully connects themes of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" to those found in last year's "Tree of Life." I hadn't considered that before but love the connection, though I feel that this film is far more accessible in its grounded communication of those themes of childhood spirituality than is Terrence Malick's much more obtuse and poetic masterpiece of last year. What the two films certainly share in common is a sense that the filmmaking was carefully staged and thought through, that the viewing of the film was only the beginning of a journey, not a complete journey unto itself.

This is what the best movies do. They prepare your mind and spirit for self-exploration of the human condition. They act as a secular sort of Jesus' parables in that they are ultimately short stories planted in your brain that you call upon again and again over time to make sense of other things. Ben Zeitlin, the film's young director making his feature film debut here, is a craftsman to watch, an inspired artist who understands what film can do regardless of one's budget.

I have only scratched the surface here in sharing with you what "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is and what it means. The film is a kind of miracle. It's been a fantastic year for studio films this year, whereas in other recent years only the smaller, independent films seemed to remember that the magic of movies isn't always what you see on screen while you're watching it, but what you take home after you're done. I have many movies from 2012 left to see, but so far, "Beast of the Southern Wild" is the finest small-budged, independent film of the year.

★ ★ ★ ★