The passionately praised Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I finally saw last night at Park City's MARC, is everything its admirers have said it is. It's a poetic, organic, at times ecstatic capturing of a hallucinatory Louisiana neverland called the Bathtub, down in the delta lowlands and swarming with all manner of life and aromas, and a community of scrappy, hand-to-mouth fringe-dwellers, hunters, jungle-tribe survivors, animal-eaters and relentless alcohol-guzzlers who live there.
It's something to sink into and take a bath in on any number of dream-like, atmospheric levels, and a film you can smell and taste and feel like few others I can think of.
Directed and co-written by Benh Zeitlin, Beasts is much more of a naturalistic object d'art than a narrative-driven drama, at least as most of us define that term. The emphasis is on sensual naturalism-wallowing -- lush, grassy, muddy, oozy, leafy, stinky, primeval, non-hygenic, slithery, watery, ants up your ass -- with a few story shards linked together like paper clips.
The narrative, as such, focuses on six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry) and a third-act search for Hushpuppy's mother.
Wallis is a hugely appealing young actress -- beautiful, spirited, wide-eyed -- and she pretty much carries the human-soul portions of the film. But Henry's dad, who cares for Hushpuppy in his own callous and bullying way, is a brute and a drunk and mostly a drag to be around, and after the fifth or sixth scene in which he's raging and yelling and guzzling booze, there's a voice inside that starts saying "I don't know how much more of this asshole I can take."
Here comes the part of the review that the keepers of the precious Sundance flame are going to dislike. If you apply the classic Jim Hoberman "brief vacations" concept of a great film not only being a kind of "sacred text" but constituting a realm that a viewer would be happy to literally take up residence within, Beasts of the Southern Wild does not, for me, pass the test.
I'm sorry but after a while it began to feel too oozy and filthy and slimey and boozy. I don't like hanging with people who drink all the time -- alcoholism is boredom incarnate -- and I don't like walking around in oil-like, knee-deep mud and feeling bugs and snakes on my body as I sleep and running across the occasional alligator who's looking to bite my leg off. I come from the suburbs of New Jersey, and I like taking hot showers and sipping wine in streetside cafes and sleeping on clean sheets and watching Blurays with my cats. And I hate snakes.
I not only didn't want to live in the world of Beasts of the Southern Wild -- a part of me wanted to escape after an hour or so. I wanted to walk or hitchhike to New Orleans, and catch a plane to Orlando and stay for a few days with Steve and Jackie Siegel, the stars of The Queen of Versailles. All right, scratch that...too extreme. But it made me think about clean roadside motels and rental cars and hot baths and power toothbrushes and all the comforts of home.
In short, I aesthetically respect and admire Beasts of the Southern Wild, but watching it almost turned me into a Republican. Until I left the theatre and went down to John Sloss's Cinetic Media party at Bing and I talked to some friends and started to feel like myself again.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on January 25, 2012 at 6:50 AM
comment #1
Luke Y. Thompson
says ...
Sounds a bit like GUMMO. Are they comparable at all?
And it probably goes without saying, but by that Hoberman test - assuming you're paraphrasing it as I'm understanding you - every Holocaust movie fails.
Posted by Luke Y. Thompson
at January 25, 2012 9:28 AM
comment #2
Robin Colcord
says ...
Wells, you're such a little nancy-boy sprite.
Posted by Robin Colcord
at January 25, 2012 9:31 AM
comment #3
AnnaZed
says ...
Maybe you are in a mood to honor the recently sacked but terrific Hoberman, but that desire to inhabit a work of art 'test' is not I don't think to be applied (and I don't think he means that it should be applied) to every work of art or movie. That would be ridiculous. You and Fake Armond White have the vapors today for some reason.
As a New Orleans raised girl I am completely psyched to see this film. The regions of the Southern Louisiana coast that are the setting for this movie are fascinating and utterly unique. While I might concede that it would be best for them not to contemplate release in AromaRama I can't wait to see it.
Posted by AnnaZed
at January 25, 2012 9:53 AM
comment #4
Tristan Eldritch2
says ...
"I come from the suburbs of New Jersey, and I like taking hot showers and sipping wine in streetside cafes and sleeping on clean sheets and watching Blurays with my cats. And I hate snakes."
Pretty much the same myself. A couple of days of camping and over-indulging at a music festival once a year is about as close as I get to roughing it.
Posted by Tristan Eldritch2
at January 25, 2012 10:01 AM
comment #5
The Thing
says ...
I'm also from New Jersey suburbs, but I love camping. Maybe because it's only for a weekend, but it's great to just be by yourself and a few friends with not much to do but be outside, getting dirty. Of course, I'm from outskirts of Piney Country, so the culture might have been a bit different than your fancy Hobokens and Secacuses.
That said, I have to agree with Anna up there; the Brief Vacation test can't be the only way to determine a good movie. I mean, by that standard, The Seventh Seal should be burned immediately. From what you wrote, you seemed to otherwise enjoy it for the most part, except the alcoholic father, so why can't you just recommend it like that? I mean, the point of the movie is to be greasy and dirty and disgusting; the fact you don't want to live there is actually want (I assume) the filmmakers are going for.
Posted by The Thing
at January 25, 2012 11:47 AM
comment #6
Gaydos
says ...
Love Hoberman but this "theory" is hogwash. Its part of the "pretty drapes" school of film criticism, a major problem with crix in my view. What we (viewers of taste) seek isn't a comfy couch but the wisdom and finesse of great artistry. Maybe because there are so few great artists at work in US cinema, we have given up on demanding wisdom, insight and finesse, ie a global, metaphysical reality that is THEIR POV to make us re-see reality.
Posted by Gaydos
at January 25, 2012 12:35 PM
comment #7
Rashad
says ...
Didn't Jeff really like Contagion? Who would want to live in that world? The concept itself is fine, and people have been wanting to live in their favorite universes for decades (Star Trek/Wars, recently Pandora), but it's not in any way a barometer of a movie's quality
Posted by Rashad
at January 25, 2012 12:40 PM
comment #8
nemo
says ...
"I come from the suburbs of New Jersey, and I like taking hot showers and sipping wine in streetside cafes and sleeping on clean sheets and watching Blurays with my cats. And I hate snakes."
I thought you came from the suburbs of Connecticut?
Posted by nemo
at January 25, 2012 3:12 PM
comment #9
Raising_Kaned
says ...
As long as the aforementioned "hot showers" don't exceed 15 minutes, right?
Posted by Raising_Kaned
at January 25, 2012 4:08 PM
comment #10
Jeffrey Wells
says ...
Not to exceed 5 minutes, actually.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells
at January 25, 2012 4:37 PM
comment #11
Jeffrey Wells
says ...
Not to exceed 5 minutes, actually.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells
at January 25, 2012 6:35 PM
comment #12
Marc Wallace
says ...
I not only applaud your cogent, open-minded review of "Beasts,"but also appreciate you seeing it at my theater,
MARC
Posted by Marc Wallace
at January 26, 2012 6:13 AM
comment #13
Kakihara
says ...
But how does it compare to Tideland?
Posted by Kakihara
at January 26, 2012 10:16 PM
comment #14
HJV
says ...
Yes, it's oozy and dirty but the first half of your review speaks of Beast's ecstatic spirit, something I thought it never lost, even when its down-in-the-dirt sensualism became slightly overbearing. For me, this was the rare film that works with its faults quite nicely, because it seems to celebrate mess over order, playing intrinsically into the uncontained psyche of its characters. If Beast were to tame its volatite camera work and eye-popping set pieces it would run the risk of becoming self-concious and reflective. It's greatest strength is that it never looks back and just keeps on trucking through the mud, so to speak, embracing its boozy, free-wheeling enthusiasm with the same defiance that makes New Orleans the shit-show national treasure that it is.
Posted by HJV
at January 27, 2012 11:01 AM