A World Away

Beasts of the Southern Wild takes the viewer into The Bathtub, a wretchedly poor bayou neighborhood, where everything is all but well. Right away I could draw some comparisons to Winter's Bone when it comes to the financial, social, and environmental setting that it takes place in. Both communities resonate an eerie feeling, mixed in with severe poverty, alcoholism, and dysfunctional families. In this particular film, there is a focus on Hushpuppy, a young black girl.

Hushpuppy has a keen sense of nature's actions, and this is communicated very well in this movie. She understands that nature is a fragile cycle - all it takes is one interruption for things to change for the worst. You see, her neighborhood is in a dire situation: the polar ice caps are melting, making the waters rise. Sooner than later, the ocean will swallow the low-lying Bathtub, which means that everyone needs to vacate the island as soon as possible. What strikes me most is that this scenario is perfectly realistic. I have seen a plethora of online articles about communities like this, in which the water is literally getting closer to people's doorsteps day by day as a result of global warming. All it takes is a minor increase in temperature. Unfortunately for Hushpuppy at this point, her father refuses to seek higher ground, believing that he can overcome nature. In fact, in one scene he fires a gun at the sky during a hurricane. On the day after the storm, one of his buddies humorously stepped out of his dilapidated home and fell into the water, which wasn't there yesterday. Instead of being concerned, Hushpuppy's father just helped him get out, and they both laughed it off. Well, it was nice knowing you Hushpuppy. Good luck.

For me, one of the most noticeable, and sometimes annoying aspects of this film is its cinematography. You don't even have to be a filmmaker to know that most of the shots, if not all, are handheld. Some are understandably shaky, while others are unnecessarily so. Do they know what a tripod is? However, looking at it from a different perspective, I am sure that this is intentional - possibly meant to convey how poor the community truly is. In other words, the shaky camera makes the scenes look less staged; this instability represents the peoples' unstable lifestyle, especially now that Mother Nature has begun unleashing its wrath on them. I do like the shot transitions between Hushpuppy and the North Pole, where the ice caps are shown melting, also releasing these huge, Wooly Mammoth-like beasts. I'm not yet sure how they play into the film, but judging from the negative plot, they signal trouble. Can you imagine what living things that have been trapped for thousands of years are capable of doing? Hopefully I'll soon find out.