Movie Spoiler BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (2012)

I caught this Oscar contender back in August. (Some say with the recent SAG ruling it out of contention, it may lose awards traction) Honestly, from the Sundance reviews, I was expecting something more abstract. The way I interpreted the early word was that this movie wasn’t linear and mixed in some fantastical elements that some audiences wouldn’t take to. Perhaps I only have my reading comprehension to blame, because I kept waiting for a point in the story that drove off the deep end to a world that would challenge my individual tastes. However, I found the film to be pretty straightforward. It’s a tale about people who live far from the mainstream in a Louisiana bayou called “the bathtub,” due to its susceptibility to flooding. The movie focuses on the relationship between a resourceful and resilient five-year-old girl and her emotionally-scarred father who also deals with physical ailments. Their lives come to a head when their home and neighborhood is washed away and the community attempts to survive, while anything permanent and consistent is below water. The performers are delightful, the story inspiring, and there is a crazy beauty to the human spirit souring in the face of tragedy. The more cryptic parts of the film are actually very poetic and accessible.

Movie Spoiler Summary
(please go easy on me; I wrote this more than a month after I saw the movie from chicken-scratch notes written in a darkened movie theater) 
Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) lives with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) on a fictional island surrounded by water in the Louisiana bayous aptly named “The Bathtub.” There isn’t a lot of money, but a great deal of spirit. In the sparsely populated town, people live in ramshackle homes and trade in food and wares. Instead of a sense of scarcity, the community prides itself on a spiritual connection. Hushpuppy’s father disappears, put pops back up while she prepares dinner thinking about her mother. She ends up setting her living quarters on fire. He slaps her and when she wishes to his face to die, he drops and has a heart attack. There’s an image of ice caps melting. Hushpuppy retrieves some medicine. Then, there are images of these beasts beginning their travels on some sort of mission, which is followed by a storm warning. Her father finds her, lifts her up by her jeans, and carries her home.

The whole village floods, and some people take boats around to survey the damage. More images of the beasts. Wink shares the tale of how he met Hushpuppy’s mother. She’s the kind of woman who would shoot an alligator and, when passing the stove, set a pot of water to a boil just by her mere presence. The town begins to support each other. While eating crab, Wink leads everyone to encourage Hushpuppy to bust open her first crab shell. The survivors set up camp above water. The beasts storm through town. Two weeks later, the water recedes, leaving death in the aftermath. The water is poisoned by carcasses and Hushpuppy ponders leaving for good. Wink hatches a plan with others to blow up a levee. Later, helicopters fly overhead to lead an evacuation. Hushpuppy tries to administer medicine to her father, leading to a fight and then reconciliation. There are more images of the beasts forging ahead, eating their own. The next day, the evacuators forcibly round up the townspeople and take them to a facility. The doctors inform Wink he has a life-threatening disease. Hushpuppy is transferred to another location, but she escapes and returns to her father. The townspeople take Walt back to their village. Hushpuppy, along with her girlfriends, swim way out into the ocean to a boat house that is jazz club filled with a bunch of courtesans, one of them being her mother. She prepares her daughter battered alligator and then everyone dances. The girls swim back. As well, there are images of the beasts doing the same. Upon her return, she meets face to face with the beasts, who genuflect before her. She feeds her father gator and they share some tears, before he dies and she sends him out to sea in a burning boat.