Day Two/Two - Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

In Beastsof the Southern Wild, inhabitants of Southern Louisana fight forsurvival after a Katrina-like storm hits their bayou community. The filmfocuses on Hushpuppy, the six-year-old heroine who narrates the story, andWink, her ill father. The primitive lives of these people is often difficult towatch. 

Often I had to ask myself whether we were living in a world similar toGorky's Lower Depths or whether we were moving into a magicrealism. Hushpuppy listens to the hearts of living things--birds, animals, her father, life?As she says, "the whole universe depends on how everything depends on everything else."


[Spoiler alert?] When the aurochs (giant boar-like creatures) appear, I felt we hadmoved from a story about Southern Louisiana into the world of myth. Near the ending when Hushpuppy sets off to find her perhapsdead mother, she meets a boatman who takes her and some of her followers to TheElysian Fields (with a sign proclaiming "Girls! Girls! Girls!"). LikeOrpheus descending into Hades she meets a waitress who says she will be hermother but then refuses to leave with her. The film finishes with a sense ofHushpuppy having conquered the beasts of her soul and being ready to lead hercommunity on (shades perhaps of The Whale Rider).

I know I'll haveto see it again. 

Beasts of the Southern Wild, 2012. ****