Beasts of the Southern Wild: Magical Realism in the American South

I actually tried to see Beasts of the Southern Wild while it was still in theaters; my friend and I actually got together to go and the theater was sold out. We ended up seeing Celeste and Jesse Forever, so it was not a total loss by any means, but one of my biggest regrets about this awards season was having seen so few of the nominees before the ceremonies, particularly this show. It's odd to cheer for a film you haven't even seen yet. I can't completely blame the sold out theater, though--I did get the DVD from Netflix before the Oscars and I still didn't watch it in time.

After all of that anticipation, of course Beasts was not exactly how I expected it to be in my head, but it was a fantastic movie. Much has been said about star Quvenzhané Wallis' Oscar nominated performance, making her the youngest actress nominated for the award. (I find it very interesting that Emmanuelle Riva's nomination this year also made her the oldest person nominated for Best Actress--there seem to be far fewer Best Actor nods at such far ends of the spectrum, and I wonder if it isn't telling that really juicy roles for actresses come with roles when women are not seen as romantic interests as much, but I digress.) Beasts is proof positive that waiting for the ideal people to make a film can make or break it.

The film was made by Behn Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, long time friends, and based off of a play by Alibar. Zeitlin melded Alibar's original one-act with imagery and setting he experienced while working on an earlier project in Louisiana, and the two worked together to create the film and find the ideal cast. There are lots of notable casting stories here--Wallis lied about her age to get an audition (she was only 5 when she was cast and had to pull the opposite move of most actresses, saying she was older), and Dwight Henry, who plays her father Wink, was a local baker who had to be coerced into filming. He only agreed when the crew told him they would work around his baker's schedule to rehearse. The casting of Wallis in particular was very influential to the end result--Hushpuppy became much younger than originally conceived, and Zeitlin has spoken about doing interviews with Wallis that shaped the script and her character. It's difficult to imagine many big Hollywood movies that would take much of their influence from their early-elementary stars, but it was a smart choice. While the film deals with very adult themes, Hushpuppy is always believable as a child.

I knew going in that Beasts was about a girl and her father living in a rural community called the Bathtub outside of the New Orleans levees. I was expecting the story to be about preparation for an impending storm, but really the storm occurs quite early in the film. While its repercussions are certainly important, the heart of the film centers on the relationship between Hushpuppy and Wink as Wink's health deteriorates.

Lucy Alibar wrote the original play, Juicy and Delicious, as an exploration of her own relationship with her father as he was going through a difficult illness. I had a vague awareness of this going in as well, and after seeing how Hushpuppy and Wink's relationship plays out in the film I found it a bit jarring at first. I feel like Alibar and I have certain things in common--we write, we're from the south, we do yoga and we think Guillermo del Toro is really cool--but Beasts presents a parent/child dichotomy that is unfamiliar to me. Obviously the format of the film does not present a word-for-word exploration of a child who is exactly Alibar and a father who is exactly her father, but I was impressed by the way Alibar and Zeitlin were able to present something that may be foreign to many of the viewers and allow it to connect in such a poignant way.

Which brings me to the format of the film; Beasts walks firmly in the territory of magical realism, with Hushpuppy frequently listening to animals, ruminating on her role as a cog in the universe, and eventually traveling to the Elysian Fields. Hushpuppy sees the storm that is coming to the Bathtub in context with a universe out of balance, and as she imagines the ice caps melting she sees them giving birth to frozen Aurochs who thaw and come to find her. As Hushpuppy's troubles mount, we see the Aurochs thundering ever closer. My favorite line in the film comes when she is finally face to face with them: "you're my friends, kind of." With a wisdom beyond her years, the young heroine has come to realize that the things that terrify us can also make us, if we can make peace with them.

In this respect the film reminded me of Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, a novel which also uses magical realism in a rural southern setting, deals strongly with family dynamics, and is narrated by a feisty young female protagonist. I find the use of magical realism with these characters extremely successful, since it mirrors the way a child can experience the world without making the viewer completely suspend disbelief and agree that yes, in this world, Aurochs have melted out of the ice caps and come to Louisiana. (One of my favorite aspects of Swamplandia! was they way in which the magic started to fade as Ava left her childhood behind, but again, I digress.)

If you haven't yet seen Beasts, I strongly recommend it. It's visually gorgeous, and a beautiful example of the way collaborative artistry and storytelling can come together to make something nuanced and moving. I'm looking forward to seeing the work that come from Alibar and Zeitlin in the future--it will be interesting to find out what their voices are like when they work on separate projects.