Beasts of the southern wild (2012)

The main actor of the film Quvenzhané Wallis was just 7 years old when she played the role. My daughter is 7 and so I let her watch this film with me. She watched it completely, not once but twice. May be she was able to identify with the film’s narrative as it is presented from a 7 year old little girl’s (Hushpuppy) perspective.

This film is about a 7 year old girl called Hushpuppy, living in a god-forsaken, bayou community in southern Louisiana, her dying father, their community members and her crumbling world, called 'The Bathtub'. The director’s decision to limit the narrative to show how the world is felt/experienced by Hushpuppy imparts some interesting subtleties to the film. For example the film never explicitly states what is her father’s disease. There is a line in the film where the father says:

My blood is eating itself. You know what that mean? 

Obviously Hushpuppy wouldn’t understant that but we could sense that he is having some terminal immune system related disease like HIV. At one point his bracelet reads something like Leptospirosis which is transmitted from animals.

It’s interesting to see how the film developes some of it’s implicit meanings. One of them is related to Hushpuppy’s mother. At an early point in the narrative we see her father describing the moment of her conception. Since everything is presented as perceived by Hushpuppy, we never see her mother’s face, because Hushpuppy doesn’t remember her mother’s face. What she remembers from her father’s narration is her mother shooting the alligator, battering and frying it. Alligator comes twice in the film narrative. First in her father’s narration and second time, at the club/brothel. First time we see killing the alligator, second time, we see the battering and frying. These two scenes are connected by a major cue, ‘the alligator’. It is strongly suggested in the film that Hushpuppy thinks the woman at the club/brothel is her mother. In addtion to the narrative cue of the alligator, both the women as presented in identical angles.

From Hushpuppy's memmory 

At the club

Both these shots are from Hushpuppy’s eye level.

It is also not clear whether the scene at the club/brothel is supposed to be real or fantasy. We are not sure what we see is a real club/brothel or somethig like the ‘Elysian fields’ of the greek mythology. Analyzing the scene at the club, I think this place is not real and the woman there too is Hushpuppy’s fantasy. Analyzing some of the shots at the encounter,

First we see Hushpuppy wandering through the club.

Then, from her view point,

we see a woman's figure slowly emerge and becomes real (into focus)

One more shot of Hushpuppy to assert that it's her view/perception or idea.

 

Before they disappear into the kitchen where Hushpuppy experiences the tender motherly love from the woman, we see a glimpse of the kitchen door.

 

Why is the kitchen so well lit? Is it the director's way of suggesting an ethereal state?

Now, what are the beasts supposed to be?

I think, the implicit meaning here is that they stand for the hardships that Hushpuppy endure inorder to survive. There is nothing in the world that favor her. Still she survives. She confronts them. There is a beautiful scene towards the end where she confronts the huge aurochs. She doesn’t step back even a tiny bit and looks unflinchingly at the beast’s eye, with mercy.

She says,

You're my friend, kind of.

I gotta take care of mine.

I think, what she meant is she is born along with/ or into hardships or hardships are her companions for life and she has to confront them. We see her father and other community members looking at her talking to the aurochs. Thus the films effortlessly weaves the fantasy element into the reality of the film.

I was deeply moved by some of the scenes that show Hushpuppy learning her survival skills.

Hushpuppy is 'hope' personified. The film skillfully mends the 'american hope' that was broken during the financial meltdown of 2008 and imparts a spiritual dimension to it. I think that's why the film became so popular in the art house.

Quvenzhané gives a tour de force performance. She is literally carrying the film on her little shoulders. How do you get that kind of a performance out of a 6/7 year old?  Honestly, I don't know. That why you say art is mysterious, at least sometimes.