Beasts of the Southern Wild (Ben Zeitlin)

[AFlickering]

ed gonzalez (inexplicably, to my mind) writes that zeitlin steps outside hush puppy's perspective and that "[there's] heartbreaking understanding in this child, raised bitterly yet miraculously right, standing up to all that is savage both inside and outside of her."

inside of her?! fuck me sideways and call me roger the clown, but i'm pretty sure the entire thrust of this narrative was to celebrate hush puppy cultivating her inner wild animal 'til she's capable of staring down a possé of endearingly silly death hogs, and more importantly would *gasp* never DREAM of using, 'yknow, cutlery and stuff. she hasn't come to perceive any flaws in her father, she's merely become her father, and zeitlin suggests that this is a good thing alongside acknowledging that her father's just an oversized, hardened child - a brave and/or foolish perspective that mirrors the attitude of its characters toward their plight. there's admirable consistency here in that respect.

it was weirdly refreshing that hush puppy learned absolutely nothing from her experience in the aid facility - that there was no scene where, say, an aid worker did something generous and made her re-think her stance on her perceived evil zombie prison. i can't help appreciating the lack of compromise in general; for good and ill, the film fully commits to the perspective of a little girl from the margins even when that leads (implicitly or otherwise) to reductive politics/ philosophising/ fearmongering, contrived dunderheaded metaphors, ADD/naive camerawork, a cartoonish portrayal of aid, etc. it's a film about a child that feels authentically like it was written and directed by that child; hilarious to imagine it canonised next to faulkner or malick(?!), but i'm sure i could find a space for it on my refridgerator door.