The Beautiful Wild
“In a nation where most of the people born into poverty will die there, it’s hateful to criticize a film on the grounds that it portrays a poor community as too vibrant or too joyous.”- Silpa Kovvali
Watching “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was a very interesting and mind opening experience for me. Watching this movie made me step far out of my comfort zone. “Beasts” was definitely not a movie I would have chosen to watch in my free time. Despite this, I found myself horrified, enchanted, and drawn to the movie. From the outside it is easy to think the life that Hushpuppy and the many others who reside in the ‘Bathtub’ live is horrible and cruel. When talking about poverty most people talk about the misery which comes along with it. It was amazing and extremely eye-opening for me to see not only the struggle of living in the ‘Bathtub’ but also the joy as well.
When I first began to watch the movie I thought I was going to hate it. Watching Hushpuppy suffer from starvation, lack of clothes, and the constant mental and physical abuse her father instilled on her, at such a young age, made me cringe. Even so I could not stop watching “Beasts” and I was aching to see what would happen next. As the story-line progressed I became more and more enchanted by the movie and its ability to make its viewers extremely sad, happy, and angry all at the same time. One of the most amazing parts of the movie, for me, was that even with everything she faced at such a young age Hushpuppy never lost her enormous resilience, imagination, and passion. She was an extremely inspiring and empowering character to watch develop throughout the movie.
I would definitely recommend “Beasts of the Southern Wild” as a movie that everyone should watch. I think the movie did an amazing job of taking a major social issue… transforming it and then presenting it in an extremely fascinating and unique way. Due to the way the movie is presented it leaves its viewers with a message that I believe everyone should and needs to ‘hear’/experience for themselves.
#cinemastudies
