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STUDENT REVIEW
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Beasts of the Southern Wild By Zachary Shevich—Junior, Drexel University
Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
“T
he whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right,” begins Hushpuppy, our 6-year-old narrator, as she explores nature, wearing a dirty old tank top, her underwear and big, white rain boots. “If one piece busts… the entire universe will get busted.”
So begins Beasts of the Southern Wild, the dynamic and wildly original new film from debut director Benh Zeitlin, in which the filmmaker transports us to the semi-fictional post-Katrinastricken Delta-community called The Bathtub. Here, Hushpuppy lives deep in the woods with her father Wink, in two separate homes, each one barely held up by stilts. Normally an independent film that chooses to highlight such forms of extreme poverty would seek to exploit that condition, Beasts instead exhibits a group of Cajun residents having a much better time than the rest of us. Every night is a party (they “have more holidays in The Bathtub”), there’s no crying at funerals (but PLENTY of alcohol), and group meals devolve into “Beast it!” chants when Hushpuppy struggles to crack open a shellfish. The residents of the Bathtub live south of the infamous levees, and barely above sea level. Most families have boats, as if traveling through a decrepit Venice. And as the storm that threatens to drown their town rolls in, many residents of The Bathtub choose to flee the way that New Orleans citizens did before Hurricane Katrina. But Hushpuppy’s father Wink knows no place else, like many others on the island, and seems fully intent on riding out the storm, for better or worse. What writer/director Benh Zeitlin is able to do with seeming ease despite this being his first film, is introduce his audience to an eclectic cast of characters with little to no explanation. We’re thrust into a completely unfamiliar situation that doesn’t ever get disorienting. Beasts of the Southern Wild takes place in a universe filmgoers have never seen before, and one that is both grounded in harsh truths and able to explore whimsical fictions, ones full of mythical beasts like the auroch. At the center of it all is Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy, the plucky, hard-nosed, and almost gender-neutral heroine (“You’re gonna’ be the king of the Bathtub”). Bursting onto the scene with all the spunk but none of the annoying lyrics that the
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