A young star is born in this captivating fantasy

Alison Rowat

Columnist and film writer

Thursday 18 October 2012

Beasts of the Southern Wild (12A)

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Benh Zeitlin’s film debut is startling and special, says Alison Rowat

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Dir: Benh Zeitlin

With: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry

Running time: 93 minutes

ONCE in a sapphire moon a film comes along that manages to achieve what all great movies aim to do. It stays in the mind for days, weeks, its images roaring into life again, its characters tapping you on the shoulder once more. Benh Zeitlin's debut feature, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is such a film.

A fantasy drama with echoes of everything from Pan's Labyrinth to Where the Wild Things Are, Beasts nevertheless has its own special magic, much of it emanating from its young star, Quvenzhané Wallis, whose performance begins at startling and goes from there. Zeitlin's tale, co-written with Lucy Alibar and inspired by her play, Juicy and Delicious, is set on a bayou in southern Louisiana. It is post-Hurricane Katrina and the aptly named community of the Bathtub is just about staying afloat. Its residents could go to the mainland and seek help (for all that might be) but this is a community of "hold-outs" – people who have dropped out of conventional life and chosen to live on what feels like the edge of the world, far from city ways. Six-year-old Hushpuppy and her father are played by Wallis and Dwight Henry. Like the rest of the cast, they are new to the acting game, but look the opposite. With Hushpuppy's mother gone, dad has become her world. But dad drinks, is given to fits of temper, and is starting to fall ill. Even the care he gives Hushpuppy in their abandoned caravan is in danger of going. Hushpuppy feels the end of the world, so long predicted by her father, is beginning. It's time to sink or swim.Though it features such heavyweight notions as environmental disaster and the death of cultures, Beasts floats along in its own sweet, often very funny, way. Terrible storms rage, of the weather and the emotional variety, and all should be doom and gloom. But Zeitlin and his cast don't play that game, managing instead to give the piece an air of constant hope. You don't know if this community will survive, or even if it wouldn't be better for it to give up, but you wish it all the best. Like some latter-day Huckleberry Finn, Hushpuppy has to live off the land. To do that she has to understand its ways. So begins a journey outside her community to find answers and, she hopes, her missing mother. Wallis turns in a performance that is quite simply amazing. Whether she is playing house in her caravan like the child she is, or battling with her father over what will happen to them, it is impossible to take your eyes from this child. This bond between the audience and Hushpuppy becomes stronger and more important as the film goes deeper into fantasy territory. Since we care what happens next, we are more prepared to go with the flow.Beasts is not a film that will supply neat solutions, neat ideas, neat anything. Like life in the place where the story is set, it has a chaotic air. Yet at the same time it has all the power and charm and simplicity of a fairytale. Like all the best fairytales it can be taken on any number of levels, as an environmental warning or simply a rattling good tale with a heartbreaking heroine at his core. Either way, it is a film that deserves to be seen. Particularly in an age when movies seem to fall off the production line like so many mass manufactured goods, Beasts is a singularly different creation, a thing of constant wonder and strange beauty.

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A young star is born in this captivating fantasy

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