A remarkable meditation on the balance
of nature and the inevitability of change, rookie feature director
Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild chronicles the
life-changing odyssey of a little girl and her small community as
they attempt to keep their way of life afloat following a cataclysmic
event.
Six-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis plays
Hushpuppy, a fiercely curious child with simple yet profound
knowledge about the way the universe fits together. In her bayou
shanty town affectionately entitled The Bathtub (a marvelously
constructed film environment that brims with character), she lives
with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) and an assortment of free-range pets
whose heartbeats she is always listening for – a reassurance that
the pulse of the universe is still ticking. When news comes that a
terrific storm approaches their low-lying tract of land, many head
for higher ground, but Wink and a handful of other holdouts
stubbournly stay to spite this catastrophic occurrence. Meanwhile,
ancient beasts known as aurochs – think Erymanthian Boar, but
bigger – are thawed out of the southern polar icecaps, and migrate
north out of hunger towards the now sunken Bathtub. With their homes
below water, the ragtag group of swamp dwellers band together and eke
out a survival plan, while Hushpuppy watches and learns, all the
while looking for a way to fix the broken piece of the universe and
set things right once more.
