Friday, January 4, 2013

The Year of Beasts of the Southern Wild


Beasts of the Southern Wild is a amazing debut film by director Benh Zeitlin, from a play by Lucy Alibar, a fellow writer that Zeitlin met in a writer's workshop as a teenager. The unlikely star of the film is six year old Quvenzhané Wallis, who had to pretend to be six when she was five to beat out 4,000 others for this part in auditions. Her character is to be brave and strong, so Nazie, as they call her, said she was that way in the audition at a local library.

The basic story is that of a motherless girl called Hushpuppy in a bayou region of an island in the Mississippi River delta area of Louisiana, the part past land's end, trying to survive amid poverty, separated from societal infrastructure, with only a handful of other residents for interaction and diversity. It's a stark, primitive existence, without any modern pleasures.

Her father is brilliantly played by New Orleans 7th ward café owner, Dwight Young, also with no previous acting experience, and who already has won two awards for best supporting actor. He plays dad Wink, who has heart trouble, and knows he won't be around while Hushpuppy grows up, so he is raising her to be the man. He demand of her "who's the man?" and she flexes her biceps and says "I'm the man!" This is probably going to be repeated often by fans of this film.

Her name is Hushpuppy likely because she feeds all the animals, their only source of food other than the river and gulf, where they catch catfish, crawfish, crabs, and other local bounty. Like everyone in low coastal areas, these few residents of an area known as The Bathtub are constantly threatened by storms, flooding, and global melting, which will easily inundate these low lying areas.


This is the best made coming-of-age story since To Kill a Mockingbird, and Wallis' performance is much tougher and more demanding than Mary Badham's, and seems more natural - you get the feeling that Nazie is not far out of her element in boats and mud in the delta.

Rather than ruin this film by too much story or analysis, as it's a magical journey of myth-making proportions, I'll let you see through these links the impact of this film, which Barack Obama called "a spectacular film - even my 4 year old niece was captivated".


Awards and Nominations
Beasts currently leads with 35 (six so far for Nazie Wallis), including wins at Sundance, and four at Cannes (next high film is Zero Dark Thirty at 21, The Master with 20, and Argo with 19):


The film page at Facebook, where people are telling their stories of this film's impact on their families or children, as well as many other links.



Unfortunately,  Beasts is debuted at Sundance last January, and often an early release in a film season loses Oscar® attention to films timed to attain academy recognition by being released in the last two calendar months of a year, which this year would include the films Life of Pi, The Hobbitt, and Lincoln. That would be a shame for Nazie Wallis, as she has given the child performance in cinema history, and she deserves the lead actress Oscar®.



15 comments:

  1. There are a lot of hollywood movies that can be crowned as best movies . It doesn't really matter that whether they are bagged with Oscar or not.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For our own personal satisfaction, it doesn't really matter about Oscars.. but it helps a film earn a lot more money when small indie films like this one don't make much.. but the nominations are a good recommendation for getting the director and actors more work.. - Jose

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your blog is very interesting. Nice to find the great details over herebest movies

    ReplyDelete
  4. thanks for the information, this is really very, interesting

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really love your blog.Very interesting and Good quality details.Appreciate your work

    - Authour of http://movie123.us/

    ReplyDelete
  6. good video and article you write i really appreciate you, keep it up.
    top hollywood movies of all time
    best hollywood movies

    ReplyDelete
  7. your blog is one of the best site for movie reviews. I enjoy reading your post. Continue like this. Bests.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oscars is a good platform for best movies to bring top up in world,But mostly director just thinking about earning money any releasing stupid story Movies, that's why very few movies hitting on Oscars goal...

    ReplyDelete
  9. love your reviews and its such a festival movie

    ReplyDelete
  10. Great feature on this movie. :) Instant like to this. For those out there, you can also checkout this helpful link http://goo.gl/Fvu8OL for your films. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Interesting blog, i mostly like to read about movies before going to download movie.

    ReplyDelete

Please use only English for all obscenities.