Why you shouldn't see it:
If you have a hard time relating to poor people or people who can't speak English, you might struggle with Beasts of the Southern Wild. I'm not talking about "poor people" as in they can only afford a feature phone instead of a smart phone, and I don't mean "poor people" as in they are forced to shop almost exclusively at Wal-mart. I'm talking about poor people in the sense that they haven't even heard of feature phones or Wal-mart. And I'm not talking about people who can't speak English because they were taught some other language as tykes; I'm talking about people who can't speak English because they are physically incapable of getting words of English out through their horribly creole lips.
The setting of this film is in a place called The Bathtub, which is a fictional... "neighborhood"? just outside the levees that protect New Orleans from flooding. These people live in a surreal sort of world where they seem to not only survive but thrive on their natural surroundings and the trash of civilization. Their lifestyle is actually fairly reminiscent of many takes on post- apocalyptic story lines. So really, anyone reading this review should have access to a computer and, therefore, be light years ahead of the good people of this movie and be largely unable to relate. Or so I assume.
I've stated before that I'm pretty good at watching movie trailers, and I'll still stand by that claim. But every once in a while, my skills will fail me, and various other factors will lead to my expectations of a movie being fairly different from the movie itself. This is one of those occasions. Specifically, the trailer and synopsis for Beasts lead one to believe that it is a much more fantastical film than it ends up being. With the exception of one part of the story, nearly every bit of it ends up being pretty firmly grounded in (a somewhat harsh) reality. It didn't help my opinion of the movie much that I thought the acting of 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis didn't strike me as any better than "decent" for a girl of her age, despite all of the rave reviews I had heard to the contrary.
Why you should see it:
While I don't anticipate any one of you being able to empathize all that strongly with the living squalor in which the protagonist of this film finds herself, I do imagine some of you can relate to her loss of a parent. Though I hope for your sake that you can't relate to her losing a parent and then having to deal with the other parent becoming seriously ill.
The metaphorical nature of the storytelling upon which Beasts is built is fairly evocative, with the world of a little girl literally coming apart while she has to deal with her father's illness. I can only imagine what it would be like to go through such a situation, but I don't believe it would be much different from how it is portrayed in the movie. In figurative terms, at least. I rather doubt that if I had, at any point, lost my parents, it would have been in the shambles that these people consider their homes.
In Short:
Beasts of the Southern Wild is as straightforward a coming of age tale as you can get while still involving the backward people of the Louisiana Bayou and mythological prehistoric beasts. The metaphor is effective, if not terribly complex, and it results in a quaint tale of a little girl's struggle with her particular lot in life. I rated it a 7 out of 10 for its successes despite its relative simplicity, and will recommend it as worth watching once, though I don't expect it to leave any powerfully lasting impressions.
Exceptions to the recommendation: if thick accents lead would lead you to turning on subtitles if only you didn't hate reading your movies; if you suffer from hydrophobia; if you suffer from cryptozoophobia; if you suffer from parthenophobia; or, more simply, if you prefer your women (particularly your pre-pubescent women) to be of the more passive variety; people who struggle enough with the parents who haven't left them.
If you have a hard time relating to poor people or people who can't speak English, you might struggle with Beasts of the Southern Wild. I'm not talking about "poor people" as in they can only afford a feature phone instead of a smart phone, and I don't mean "poor people" as in they are forced to shop almost exclusively at Wal-mart. I'm talking about poor people in the sense that they haven't even heard of feature phones or Wal-mart. And I'm not talking about people who can't speak English because they were taught some other language as tykes; I'm talking about people who can't speak English because they are physically incapable of getting words of English out through their horribly creole lips.
The setting of this film is in a place called The Bathtub, which is a fictional... "neighborhood"? just outside the levees that protect New Orleans from flooding. These people live in a surreal sort of world where they seem to not only survive but thrive on their natural surroundings and the trash of civilization. Their lifestyle is actually fairly reminiscent of many takes on post- apocalyptic story lines. So really, anyone reading this review should have access to a computer and, therefore, be light years ahead of the good people of this movie and be largely unable to relate. Or so I assume.
I've stated before that I'm pretty good at watching movie trailers, and I'll still stand by that claim. But every once in a while, my skills will fail me, and various other factors will lead to my expectations of a movie being fairly different from the movie itself. This is one of those occasions. Specifically, the trailer and synopsis for Beasts lead one to believe that it is a much more fantastical film than it ends up being. With the exception of one part of the story, nearly every bit of it ends up being pretty firmly grounded in (a somewhat harsh) reality. It didn't help my opinion of the movie much that I thought the acting of 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis didn't strike me as any better than "decent" for a girl of her age, despite all of the rave reviews I had heard to the contrary.
Why you should see it:
While I don't anticipate any one of you being able to empathize all that strongly with the living squalor in which the protagonist of this film finds herself, I do imagine some of you can relate to her loss of a parent. Though I hope for your sake that you can't relate to her losing a parent and then having to deal with the other parent becoming seriously ill.
The metaphorical nature of the storytelling upon which Beasts is built is fairly evocative, with the world of a little girl literally coming apart while she has to deal with her father's illness. I can only imagine what it would be like to go through such a situation, but I don't believe it would be much different from how it is portrayed in the movie. In figurative terms, at least. I rather doubt that if I had, at any point, lost my parents, it would have been in the shambles that these people consider their homes.
In Short:
Beasts of the Southern Wild is as straightforward a coming of age tale as you can get while still involving the backward people of the Louisiana Bayou and mythological prehistoric beasts. The metaphor is effective, if not terribly complex, and it results in a quaint tale of a little girl's struggle with her particular lot in life. I rated it a 7 out of 10 for its successes despite its relative simplicity, and will recommend it as worth watching once, though I don't expect it to leave any powerfully lasting impressions.
Exceptions to the recommendation: if thick accents lead would lead you to turning on subtitles if only you didn't hate reading your movies; if you suffer from hydrophobia; if you suffer from cryptozoophobia; if you suffer from parthenophobia; or, more simply, if you prefer your women (particularly your pre-pubescent women) to be of the more passive variety; people who struggle enough with the parents who haven't left them.