Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A good film is a confluence of many variables. A good director orchestrates these variables into a finished form. Beasts of the Southern Wild is such a film and Behn Zeitlin is such a director. And the brilliance of Zeitlin is that he manages to take all manner of seemingly contradictory elements and make them,as a nameless boat captain says in the film, cohesive. One such variable is story. Hushpuppy is a six-year-old girl who lives with her father on the wrong side of a levee in a fictitious Southeast Louisiana town called The Bathtub. The film follows her point of view, and the world of her active imagination and the real world around her often intertwine on screen. The film is your standard coming of age story, but it is this unique perspective of Hushpuppy and her understanding of the world around her that is the foundation of the film and its magic. Another variable is music. The director worked closely with his friend and composer Dan Romer in creating the score for the film. The result is one of the best scores in modern cinema. Just like the film, the music is a beautiful blend of contradictions. It's uplifting yet tinged with sadness, vast yet intimate, wise and noble yet naive and playful. And the final variable I'll mention is performance. Other reviewers have made mention of the non-actors that occupy this film. This is another example of the director taking the contradictory and making it cohesive. It would seem unlikely that those untrained in the craft of acting would be able to aptly portray such subtlety, humor, love and pathos yet there it is, captured on film for all to see. Beasts of the Southern Wild is a film that will simultaneously break, mend, and uplift your heart. Do your soul a favor and see this film.