(1 hr & 33 min, color, 2012)
The mixture of reality and
fantasy is nothing new in modern cinema.
The fun sometimes is trying to discern where one leaves off and the
other begins. Sometimes the surreal portions
of a film are quite obvious, due to a change in the color palette or in the
rate of perceived motion or in a sudden shift in the photographic style of a
scene or sequence, maybe a change of lighting.
In other instances the fantasy sneaks up on the viewer. You think you are in authentic time, when
something happens to explode that illusion, something shocking or incredible or
off the charts of possibility. No signal
warning or foreshadowing has prepared you for it. In most cases movie fantasy brings with it at
the very least a sense of foreboding and unsettlement. In “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a recent
release that has won an Oscar nomination for Best Picture in the upcoming
competition, the fantastic is part of the landscape. It does not intervene; it is itself the shape
of the characters’ world and their
expectations.
The main character is
Hushpuppy, a six-year-old dark skinned child who resides in a backwater
community somewhere in the Mississippi Delta country, portrayed by a scrappy
little child actress named Quvenzhane Wallis (and do not ask me to pronounce
that first name). She lives in a
ramshackle house that is barely more than a hut, and in her narration of her
story she talks of things you and I would only imagine, as if they were native
to the only existence she has ever known, chiefly an ancient, almost extinct
animal called the aurochs. Her life is
almost under water, the soggy marshland constantly puttering at her bare feet
and right up to her door, so that it only takes a massive flood to put her and
her people under it. The area in which
she dwells has been named The Bathtub by its inhabitants. She and her neighbors live with the constant
expectation that the ice caps will melt, that the aurochs will be turned loose from
their primeval graves to roam the earth and threaten human life and that the
Delta dwellers will be called upon to use techniques of survival that are
unheard of. They all interpret the flood
that comes upon them as the apocalyptic arrival of that Arctic meltdown. For all we are told, it might be. No one is driven mad; no one evidences any
surprise.
This child is really tuned in
to her watery world. She even listens to
heartbeats, not just of humans but those of animals, and living up to its title
the film has plenty of them to fill the scenery – a dog, birds, chickens, pigs,
fish in plentiful abundance, alligators, goats, sheep, a shark (albeit a dead
one), even an owl and a caterpillar. But
of course the heartbeat of the screenplay is the relationship between her and
her fatherWink (Dwight Henry). The
language they speak to each other is something you are likely never to have
heard or witnessed before, however much of a movie buff you are.
Hushpuppy must face down many
things – the flood itself, the father’s life threatening illness, the absence
of her mother who mysteriously disappeared at the time of Hushpuppy’s birth,
the bleak landscape left in the storm’s wake, the death of some of her
neighbors, and ultimately the aurochs itself.
At what would be a tender age for any ordinary child she must
demonstrate a mettle that prepares her for being on her own in an uncertain migratory
future. Yes, at only six years old!
Her narration is not the
droppings of some unseen savant forced into a child’s mouth. She needs no one to speak for her. She uses her own patois and succeeds in
sounding just as poetic and profound as an adult orator. Her basic belief she sums up quite well: “The
whole universe depends upon everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece,
the entire universe will get busted.” But
“if you can fix the broken piece, everything can go right back.” And in a moment of lonely, desperate decision-making
she declares, “When you’re small, you gotta fix what you can.” Upon her entrance into a flood shelter after
a forced evacuation, she remarks that it is nothing like the prison she
expected. It “looks like a fish tank
with no water.” You get the feeling that
her “universe” is her own little neck of the woods, the only one she knows, and
her words derive from what her father has drilled into her. His creeping cancer, however, is for her the
bad fit that turns everything upside down as well as his pathetically fanatical
refusal to leave The Bathtub or accept medical help, after his home is destroyed. Slowly Hushpuppy comes to realize that this
man she has always regarded as her protector is really something of a prison
keeper for her. Understandably she
begins to think that her long gone mother is somewhere over the horizon and she
goes in search of her.
How despite his stormy
stubbornness Wink tries to prepare Hushpuppy for his departure is phenomenal. Theirs is a world within the world within the
universe, one none of us is likely ever to have visited. The folks in this small community may be
isolated and unable to think outside their little box, but they are not pagan
savages; real communal, humane love and affection show up in several touching
scenes. There are powerful dramatic
moments all through the film under the shrewd direction of Benh Zeitlin,
scripted by him and Lucy Aliber, author of the play “Juicy and Delicious” on
which the screenplay is based. I cannot
begin to imagine how challenging it must have been for art direction and
cinematography. There is nothing neat
about any set on which things are staged.
I doubt if any film ever made has ever required more water for its
realization. Afterward you may feel at
least psychologically waterlogged. You may
need to look around you to make sure terra firma is still firmly under your
feet. However mythic and fabled it may
be, metaphorically it is the age old crisis of one generation handing things
off to another, and of a child beginning to outgrow the world view of the
parent. If you can focus on that very
human struggle beneath the fantasy, you have got the strange, uncanny thing
well in hand.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com
I welcome feedback. Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net
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