Beasts of the Southern Wild

This movie was unquestionably the biggest breakout hit of SUNDANCE 2012. I will fess up that it hadn’t even entered my radar until everyone (that I respected) at the Festival was raving about it, and so much so that the Organizers thankfully scheduled an extra P + I Screening so i could join a packed and very excited line of die-hard film professionals to see if it lived up to the hype of the circuit. This is the Blog I published at the time:-

Set against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina this is a gritty story about a father and daughter. Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in “the Bathtub”, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.

It is a magical realist tale and is stunning visually and also extremely tender and touching especially with the scenes between father and daughter ….(she is played by an amazing wide-eyed sensational 6yr old called Quvenzhabe Wallis). It is also quite unlike anything I have ever seen before.

Manohla Dargis in ‘The NY Times’ went as far as declaring it not just the standout of this year’s Sundance, but one of the best movies to play there in the past two decades. I’m not qualified to know if that is true, but I will say that it is unquestionably one of the best movies what we saw this week. I will also confess that it never even surfaced on our radar until others started talking it up so enthusiastically, and I will also own up to the fact that that was not sure exactly what this allegory completely meant at first, but after a second viewing the penny started to drop. I had also forgotten how wonderfully moving the soundtrack is : kind of blows you away.P.S. It has opened this week in NY to rave reviews and there is even talk of this being the first movie of 2012 that has started the buzz of possible Oscars even