Recently saw engaging indie flick Beasts of the Southern Wild with my bud Ramin.
It was oddly coincidental that we happened to venture to the theater to check this flick out just a few days before Hurricane Isaac swept through on the seventh anniversary of Katrina.
Beasts is a quirky, interesting little movie about a young black girl who lives in an area of New Orleans known as "The Bathtub," presumably because of its tendency to flood when hurricanes hit. The movie begins just before Hurricane Katrina descends on the region.
The little girl's father is raising her as a single parent, since her mother ran off without explanation.
The story mainly centers on how the residents of the Bathtub band together after Katrina hits, sharing food and supplies and huddling together in one of the community's ramshackle structures that wasn't badly damaged by the storm. The multiracial group of residents resist the government's efforts to round them up and put them in a shelter.
Seeing that her father is gravely ill, the little girl goes on a quest to pinpoint the source of a blinking light on the horizon that she believes to be some kind of signal from her mother. As they doggypaddle across the Gulf with only a small life preserver to keep them afloat, the girl and some of the other little girls from the Bathtub are picked up by a kindly boat captain who helps them complete their journey.
At a floating bar in the middle of the Gulf, the girl meets a pretty woman who may or may not be her mother. The woman gives her advice about life - that it's rough and to let go of childlike impressions that everything will be fabulous when she grows up - and invites the girl to stay with her. I won't spoil the movie by revealing what the little girl ultimately decides.
Intensifying the plot is that the little girl has visions that enormous wild boars are coming to attack the close-knit community she lives in and destroy the world as she knows it. It's unclear whether these "beasts" that the title refers to are real are just figments of the little girls imagination.
Beasts of the Southern Wild doesn't exactly have a linear plot with a beginning, middle and end - at least not in the traditional Hollywood moviemaking sense. Although it's a small movie made outside the studio system with an independent spirit, it's not free of cliches and stereotypes. Life in New Orleans is depicted in Beasts just like it's been depicted in dozens of other stories - as a multicultural melting pot where people with funny accents drink and party a lot and gobble up loads of crayfish.
Overall, I'd recommend Beasts. It's a heartfelt, character-driven movie that held my attention, wondering what was going to happen next.
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