Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) is a fantasy film following 6-year-old Hushpuppy as her hometown floods and she deals with her father’s angry outbursts.

This is a film that I really feel I need to watch again, because I’m not entirely convinced I understood what was happening. The film has a bizarre feeling of being set somewhat in the future, where global warming is melting icecaps and submerging Hushpuppy’s village, but also aesthetically looks like an older setting. The creation of the fictional aurochs that came from the icebergs confused me further, and I don’t know if I missed something because of my sound quality or if they really only became relevant later in the film? I can’t remember them being explained. Nor do I know why Hushpuppy’s presence was enough to scare them away. Were they going to eat the people?

Aurochs aside, I think the story of a young girl dealing with her father’s declining health in a situation of poverty is extremely touching and the film handled the moment of him coughing up blood outside the hospital and then his eventual death well in my opinion. I think the desire to find her mother is quite a natural one for Hushpuppy, though I’m not sure about how this is explored, but I suppose the character is a six-year-old so wouldn’t necessarily be logical in her search for her mother. Attempting to find her mother just didn’t feel like the main focus of the plot, I think because the story of a young girl seeking out affection from her absent parent was conflicting with the attention on the melting ice and random aurochs.

I thought the film was alright, and sometimes the emotional aspects managed to distract me from my confusion, but I don’t know if the film had too much it was trying to do or I’ve just entirely missed the point of it and need to re-watch. I think the characters were portrayed well and the relationship between Hushpuppy and her father was complex and interesting to watch. Maybe studying the film will help me understand it better.