Beasts of the Southern Wild

Well, I can't count this movie as a free movie, because I paid a whole whopping $3.99 to digitally rent it from Amazon! It's an outrage! But, your review is still free, as usual, so I guess we'll all survive.

Beasts of the Southern Wild was pretty... awesome. It mashed up bizarre societies, trash-heap counterculture, chaotic people, family dysfunction, environmental implosion, and prehistoric imagery in that special Waterworld-Meets-Precious-based-on-the-novel-Push-by-Sapphire kind of way.

Especially as Behn Zeitlin's directorial debut, this movie is pretty impressive.

It is, however, a giant bummer.

It starts out sad. It gets sadder. Then a different kind of sad. Then depressing. Then sad again. And the ending... well, I won't spoil it for you, but it doesn't really disrupt the pattern. However, it focuses on a (very) young girl's attempt to maintain a sense of self and personal safety amid being thrown in a giant bucket full of bummers.

The lead actress, Quvenzhane Wallis, is nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. I think that's fine. I think she was really perfect for the role, but I wasn't blown away by her. She played a better 6 year old than I could have, but... you know... she was actually 6. So... yeah.

She probably also played a better 6 year old than most people could have when they were 6.  And, I really think that the Best Actress category is the weakest it has been in several years, so she just might win. The novelty of having someone so young in such a good movie will probably override the fact that the effectiveness of her role was probably more about excellent directing and editing than anything else.

I guess I'm just not that into kids doing stuff. I can't be a fan of someone who doesn't grow armpit hair. I always kind of feel bad for them, because I assume that they are all being treated like trained chimpanzees.

Ugh.
And I bet she's out doing the late-night circuit, being precocious.
Barf.
Even my mental image of that is obnoxious.

She was fine, though. I wouldn't mind it if she won. I just have a hunch that if you sat down and had a conversation with her, she wouldn't be able to tell you anything meaningful about what the movie was about without any coaching.

However, the person pulling a HUGE amount of the acting load in this movie, but who has been almost totally overlooked, is Dwight Henry as Hushpuppy's totally batshit crazy dad. He embodies the title of this movie, and yet was really quite touching, noble, deeply flawed, and possibly psychotic all at the same time. I liked (and appropriately hated) him.

I think you should check out this movie. First of all, it's only $3.99 on Amazon. Even I can afford that!

Secondly, we could all use a good cry right now. Right? Right.

And lastly, it will make you feel better about your housekeeping abilities, because even though you think you live in a big pile of trash... these people ACTUALLY live in big piles of trash. It's good to get some perspective about our lifestyles of excess every once in awhile.

Peggy's rating: Four out of Five Stars