"Beasts of the Southern Wild" - Film Review

It’s difficult to get a good performance out of a young actor. Most children and young adults can put on a nice baby face and give a big grin for the camera, but the performances often tend to fail to have nuance. It’s even more difficult when you have to get a young actor to bring to life very serious material. Recent performances, especially on television, have proven it possible. Morgan Saylor’s quiet, nervous energy is wonderful on Homeland. Maisie Williams is incredibly charismatic and raw as Arya Stark on Game of Thrones. Kiernan Shipka has turned into one of the stealthily good performances on Mad Men as Sally Draper. Even on the big screen it’s not unheard of. Shailene Woody gives a great performance with some heavy, dramatic material in The Descendants. Other young actresses such as Saoirse Ronan and Chloe Grace Moretz have shown themselves capable of confidently inhabiting tricky roles. (Now that I consider it, there are not as many recent young male examples. The last truly solid one I can think of is Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.). Long story short, though it’s not unheard of for young actors to pull off weighty material, it’s rather difficult and that’s why it’s always great to see young, talented actors demonstrate their ability. All the more impressive when they’re only 5 years old, as Quvenzhané Wallis was when she played Hushpuppy in Beast of the Southern Wild.

We see almost the entirety of the film through Hushpuppy’s young, optimistic, imaginative eyes. Too young to always comprehend all the things going on around her; she doesn’t get many of the implications of the tragedies and triumphs surrounding her. But she’s got a big heart, and tries to see the best in people. Abandoned by her mother, she’s raised by her sickly, quick-tempered father Wink (Dwight Henry), who, though he often doesn’t show it as well as he ought to, loves her a great deal. They live in the “Bathtub” an isolated, impoverished Louisiana bayou community, constantly struggling to get by, but with a strong sense of community. Their lives and those of the community are imperiled when a deadly storm threatens to destroy the town. 

The film deals with the community’s struggles with poverty and their attempts to protect their homes from the storm with integrity, realism, and compassion. Gorgeously shot, and imaginatively depicted, it provides a dignified, realistic, memorable look at an under-looked part of the country and the everyday concerns of the people who live there. Wallis handles the very serious material with surprising ease, and you never once question her performance; she carries the film with a brightness and enthusiasm that help raise the film above its world weary, dreary undertones. This is a great debut film from writer and director Benh Zeitlin; hopefully we see more from him in the future.  

Grade: B+