The Good:
· The movie is visually rich and filmed really well. Wonderful fantastical imagery.
· All of the actors in the movie are not "actors" at all, just regular people. That was interesting and impressive to me. It is also surprising that the guy that played Hushpuppy's father didn't get nominated for something. He was really good. Just as good as the little girl that is nominated and their scenes together were the best part of the movie.
· No doubt that little girls is adorable and amazing. I will never know how to spell or pronounce her name, so to me she will always be that "Q-Girl".
The Bad:
· Near the start of the film Hushpuppy narrates something along the lines of (and I am paraphrasing from memory here) : My name is Hushpuppy, I live in the Bathtub with my Daddy". That one sentence is unfortunately the whole plot of the movie.
· There is poverty in the movie... GREAT poverty. But the movie made me feel like it was glorifying that WAY TOO MUCH and WAY TOO SIMPLY. Essentially saying; Regular Society = hollow, inevitable. Poor swamp people = romantic, doomed. The whole first half of the film is basically that scene in Titanic where Rose leaves her stuffy old first class soirée so Jack can show her some real fun down in steerage, where the poor but happy people drink frosty brews and dance jigs. OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, POVERTY IS SO MUCH FUN! WHY HAVEN’T WE COME DOWN HERE BEFORE?! When you live in the city and you buy your food at the supermarket, it’s a pleasant fantasy to believe that people who sleep in the dirt and gut their own dinners are somehow closer to living a BS free and more "natural" life. It’s also a really old fantasy.
· WTF are those "creatures" and what are they supposed to mean?
· This movie insists upon itself
Let me start by saying your Titanic reference has me dying because during one of the 'boat' scenes with Hushpuppy and Daddy I looked at Paul and said..."hey, it's Toyota-Tanic"
ReplyDeleteThis movie does insist upon itself and I couldn't agree more about the "abject poverty is for real people" theme.
I branded this "Where the wild thing Are" meets "Winter's Bone" with a dash of "Inconvenient Truth". UGH.
ReplyDeleteSo by ugh can we assume this was not so great for you?
DeleteI only needed to read the bolded text to know the above review was posted by Elizabeth Spingler. I think we need a game called "name that reviewer", where quotes like "POVERTY IS SO MUCH FUN! WHY HAVEN’T WE COME DOWN HERE BEFORE?!" have to be accurately matched with photos of Elizabeth at the Titanic 100th anniversary dinner at the Omni Parker House.
ReplyDeleteOK... Beasts. Check.
ReplyDeleteMuch to agree with, E-Beth.
Rich and thoroughly engaging visually. Well shot, and unlike many, I did not at all mind the "shaky hand held" technique employed in the film. For me, it underscored the poverty portrayed in the film.
Speaking of such, a couple of thoughts on the poverty.... there has been a bit of talk about the "difficulty" of watching two well nominated films this year - Django and Zero Dark Thirty. The former, I did find difficult to watch at times, the later I did not. Beasts, I found significantly difficult to watch... because of the poverty. It was gratuitous, yes, but combined with the elements that sprung out of the poverty, my tender human heart broke more than once. (NOTE: Here is where you can easily match my review with a photo of me underground with kids in Haifa)
The acting - agreed, the 2 main, non-actors are almost seamless in their performances, and Dwight Henry deserves a nomination as easily as Quvenzhane Wallis did and does.
Overall, I felt I was watching a film about transcending forces - sometimes a theme too obviously portrayed (as E-Beth pointed out, we're poor, but our lives are so much more rich because we live in the mud unbound by your silly machines), but sometimes more poetically or symbolically portrayed, as in Hush Puppys communing with the creatures in the world.. AND.. for me, most of all through the "Aurochs"..
what WERE they SUPPOSED to mean? I don't know for certain, but for me, throughout the film, I felt they represented powers stronger/bigger than ourselves... and thus, I was not surprised (trying not to do any spoiling) by their behavior change at the end.
Overall, no surprise the Academy loves this film, as it does, in fact "insist upon itself" and has all those Academy check box things - have vs. have not, great performances by unknowns, allegory, a relatively unknown director, and an indictment of wealth and technology...
I can say that I enjoyed it... but I can't say that I loved it.