Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Hushpuppy

Beasts of the Southern Wild is not an easily classifiable film but rather carries a number of elements of storytelling, metaphor and messages. The film is set in the marshy, swamp Bayou country somewhere around Louisiana in the Southern United States within a small self-sufficient community who live defiantly away from mainstream society. The story is focussed on six-year-old Hushpuppy who lives with her father, Wink, in "The Bathtub", the swampy marshland where the community lives and which is under threat due to storms, rising water levels and the levees which protect the rest of society. Wink periodically disappears leaving Hushpuppy to fend for herself amongst the semi-domestic animals they keep. The community's children are taught in school about natural selection in evolution, global warming and the ecological shifts underway thorugh the melting of the icecaps. A massive storm comes, the icecaps melt, destructive prehistoric beasts are released and 'the Bathtub' is threatened with extinction. Wink is also terminally ill and this story about community is as much about the underlying powerful relationship between a father and his daughter. Benh Zeitlin's film is, at times, slow moving  and occasionally a bit baffling (with the appearance of prehistoric creatures) nonetheless it captures a community's fierce independence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.