BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD: this is what a multiple Oscar winner looks like

Let me save the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a whole bunch of money on postage.
Don't bother mailing out all those nomination ballots this year. Just etch the title BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD on the Oscars for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress and be done with all the speculation.
BEASTS is not a film you just watch - it's an incredibly powerful, all senses fully engaged cinematic experience!

It's so much more than simply the story of a young girl and her father battling to preserve their own lives and way of life in a coastal Louisiana bayou swamped by a Katrina-like tropical storm, but that's a good place to start.
In her film debut, six year old Quvenzhane Wallis gives the kind of performance many adult actors strive all their professional life to get close to. To describe it as stunning and sensational is grossly inadequate. She displays a naturalism and innate understanding of her character that seems impossible to achieve in one so young and inexperienced. Kids playing themselves in fly-on-the-wall documentaries aren't this convincing!
Wallis is Hushpuppy, a six year old girl living with her unpredictable and unreliable father, Wink (Dwight Henry) in a couple of dilapidated shacks on an isolated bayou island called the Bathtub, cut off from the rest of 21st century America by an imposing levee. Hushpuppy has the kind of freedom most kids her age can only dream of but what she longs for more than anything is to find her mother. It's not clear from Wink's vague explanation whether she's dead or simply deserted them but Hushpuppy won't rest until she's made every effort to find her.
She's presented with an unexpected opportunity when a huge storm floods the Bathtub, destroying the homes and way of life of the small, resilient community who've chosen this edge-of-the-world existence over the bland and sterile life of those living the other side of the levee.

While Hushpuppy's quest to find her mother provides the thread which pulls the pieces of the story together there is, as I mentioned earlier, so much more to BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. The film is an unapologetic celebration of life on the fringe where friendships, rituals and community as a tribe are more important than money and possessions. Director Benh Zeitlin's handheld camera is in constant motion, bringing a splendor and romanticism to daily life which transcends the reality of the poverty and squalor.
The story also blends fantasy and reality in musing on man's place in and responsibility to the planet. How have events stretching back as far as the Ice Age, and the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, impacted on our present existence and at what cost do we ignore a planet in constant evolution? Hushpuppy, at age six, has more insight into her place and importance in the grand scheme of things than any of the adults around her, and eloquently expresses her understanding in a series of voice-overs scattered through the story.
Emotionally engaging, entrancing and visually spectacular BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is a remarkable experience. I'm not going to pretend I've seen every film released this year but even if I had I don't imagine I would change my opinion that BEASTS should - if there's any justice - clean up at next February's Oscars ceremony.