“Beasts of the Southern Wild”

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Ella Taylor reviews Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film which “racked up a total of four major awards and a storm of press attention” at Sundance and Cannes. It focuses on “Hushpuppy, a motherless bayou waif living on the edge of multiple disasters” in ”the Bathtub, a fictional wasteland on the wrong side of the tracks and the levee.”

“Zeitlin, a transplanted New Yorker and the son of two folklorists, wants us to experience Beasts as a fairy tale in a tradition reaching back to Grimm by way of Maurice Sendak. Tricked out in a palette of rich browns and oranges, the film is a mesmerizing hellhole of magical realism, complete with a pack of wild beasts played by local hogs in headdresses, who may turn out to be friend or foe.”

Charley Locke finds autumn beautiful in New Haven but prefers the sunny disposition of her hometown, Berkeley. When not interning at The Rumpus, she loves reading almost everything and traveling almost everywhere. She recently wrote a cookbook of recipes and interviews with Moroccan women, and hopes to return to the Maghrib soon, despite the lack of bacon. More from this author →