June 2012
“Beasts of the Southern Wild is selling a fantasy, though it’s not a fantasy about a little girl who cooks her dinners with a blowtorch or about magical alligator meat or friendly tugboat captains who collect fried chicken wrappers or prehistoric creatures emerging from Arctic ice. It’s a fantasy of Hurricane Katrina—the imagery of which Beasts appropriates whenever it’s convenient—as a natural disaster that brought out the best in people, rather than a man-made catastrophe that revealed the worst aspects of a society. Ironically, the film’s FEMA stand-ins seem to be reasonably good at their jobs; it’s the Bathtub’s residents’ decision to weather the storm and then later to return without aid. Beasts pretends to be celebrating gumption and resolve, but what it’s ultimately selling is stubbornness and isolationism. There is a word for films like this: bullshit.”
—Notebook Reviews: Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” on Notebook | MUBI
