Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a very different movie.  I first heard of it on NPR.  In searching for the setting the interviewee stated that he went as far out in Louisiana as he possibly could until he came to the end of the road and the setting of the story.  A small, displaced community out of step in both time and setting.  The story is about a young girl searching for her mother and a father who is trying to do his best to raise his daughter in the only way he knows.  My friends have described it in different ways including "I loved it but won't watch it again" and "it is a brutal movie."  To me it had many qualities including the harshness of living in a very poor rural southern community to how that community really was a community; a collective of disparate souls trying to make the best of life.  It could be that in some ways I was not as sensitive to the darkness as I grew up at one time in the rural south in poverty though not as bad as depicted in the movie.

On NPR the interviewee described their surprise at how deep the girl was who would end up with the leading role.  They asked her what she would do if the world was to end tomorrow.  She responded that she would brush her teeth and clean her room.

The movie is stirring, deep, liberating, inspiring and magical while every once in a while dipping into a more dark side of growing up with pain, loss and separation.