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Beasts of the Southern Wild (contains spoilers)
Watching this movie is akin to eating at a nice meal at a restaurant with someone at the table next to you slurping their soup the entire time or listening to one of your favorite albums in the middle of summer while your home's air conditioner is broken. In other words, the movie's merits - and it has some - are tainted by an elephant in the room; specifically, the way it romanticizes poverty. I cannot shake the vibe that the movie's perspective towards its Gulf Coast residents is from someone who merely watched a documentary about them or spent a random Saturday volunteering to assist them, i.e. an outsider, or better yet, a dilettante. There is truth in how the movie depicts the strong sense of identity and fellowship of such communities, but it does not give a fair shake to the problems they experience such as lack of opportunities, necessities, etc. and the associated consequences, the possible exception being the alcoholism we observe in Hushpuppie's father Wink. Speaking of, Zeitlin and company may very well be experts on these communities' fondness for nicknames, but their preciousness and other touches like a resident dressing in a hip getup complete with fedora that you can imagine one of the filmmakers owning are more saccharine than sincere. I have heard the argument that it's foolish to be bothered by such inaccuracies because the movie is from Hushpuppie's perspective, but when I think of better movies that show a world from a child's eyes, that naivety does not extend to how its adults experience it. Smoke Signals, for instance, is largely from the perspective of Thomas Builds-The-Fire, who is an adult, but his view of Native American reservation life could best be described as innocent and childlike. I walked away from that movie with a better understanding of the pros and cons of having that mindset, but it’s one that is much more substantial in comparison because I also gained a more realistic understanding of what life is really like in such communities. Again, the movie is not entirely without merit: the ways it depicts the kind of love a father has for his children is accurate - I do like the scene where Wink encourages Hushpuppie to break the crab shell with her hands instead of utensils - and her imagining the toughest that life has to offer in the form of a herd of aurochs is an imaginative touch. Plus, there's her trip to the restaurant and dance club, which succeeds for how it shows the humbling experience she has there and for its ambiguity. Regardless, I went into Beasts of the Southern Wild hoping that its dramatization of the horror that was Hurricane Katrina and how it affected its most vulnerable communities would honor and accurately represent that regrettable part of history. Unfortunately, it was much better at honoring and representing the worst things about early 2010's hipsterism.
Watching this movie is akin to eating at a nice meal at a restaurant with someone at the table next to you slurping their soup the entire time or listening to one of your favorite albums in the middle of summer while your home's air conditioner is broken. In other words, the movie's merits - and it has some - are tainted by an elephant in the room; specifically, the way it romanticizes poverty. I cannot shake the vibe that the movie's perspective towards its Gulf Coast residents is from someone who merely watched a documentary about them or spent a random Saturday volunteering to assist them, i.e. an outsider, or better yet, a dilettante. There is truth in how the movie depicts the strong sense of identity and fellowship of such communities, but it does not give a fair shake to the problems they experience such as lack of opportunities, necessities, etc. and the associated consequences, the possible exception being the alcoholism we observe in Hushpuppie's father Wink. Speaking of, Zeitlin and company may very well be experts on these communities' fondness for nicknames, but their preciousness and other touches like a resident dressing in a hip getup complete with fedora that you can imagine one of the filmmakers owning are more saccharine than sincere. I have heard the argument that it's foolish to be bothered by such inaccuracies because the movie is from Hushpuppie's perspective, but when I think of better movies that show a world from a child's eyes, that naivety does not extend to how its adults experience it. Smoke Signals, for instance, is largely from the perspective of Thomas Builds-The-Fire, who is an adult, but his view of Native American reservation life could best be described as innocent and childlike. I walked away from that movie with a better understanding of the pros and cons of having that mindset, but it’s one that is much more substantial in comparison because I also gained a more realistic understanding of what life is really like in such communities. Again, the movie is not entirely without merit: the ways it depicts the kind of love a father has for his children is accurate - I do like the scene where Wink encourages Hushpuppie to break the crab shell with her hands instead of utensils - and her imagining the toughest that life has to offer in the form of a herd of aurochs is an imaginative touch. Plus, there's her trip to the restaurant and dance club, which succeeds for how it shows the humbling experience she has there and for its ambiguity. Regardless, I went into Beasts of the Southern Wild hoping that its dramatization of the horror that was Hurricane Katrina and how it affected its most vulnerable communities would honor and accurately represent that regrettable part of history. Unfortunately, it was much better at honoring and representing the worst things about early 2010's hipsterism.