Faced with both her hot-tempered father's fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.
Beasts Of The Southern Wild is bracingly original and utterly beguiling.
Despite its hard-scrabble setting, eco-gloominess and dystopian story, this dark fairytale is engagingly vivid and life-affirming. An ambitious love letter to a Louisiana way of life that’s being literally washed away.
An eccentric, hyperbolic, soulful mess.
The narrative is littered with missteps, notably a stop at a disaster relief centre that feels horribly rushed, and the incidents of magic realism that he tries to insert into the picture are an awkward fit.
Beasts of the Southern Wild arrives on a wave of praise that can’t help but seem a little overzealous given the rather precious story that’s on offer.
Beautiful, funny, timely and tender, this is the American arthouse movie of the year.
It bustles with ideas, resplendent visuals and a battered yet proud humanity. On all fronts, it’s simply unmissable.
Has ambition and poetry to burn.
The reckless swirl of the imagery is vital, eccentric and bold enough to constitute its own majestic defence.
I wanted to like it, but didn't; its poetical effects seemed forced, and its fable-like atmosphere unconvincing.
Beasts offers a heady jumble of images and impressions.
Delightful, unexpected, unlike anything you’ve seen in a long time.
It's a hot mess all right, and largely in a good way, but it may be more your bowl of gumbo than mine.
The film is variously poetic, mysterious and opaque, a bit like the work of the African director Souleymane Cissé but without the depth.
The drivel runs through it.
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild: 'I didn't expect people to like it'
Benh Zeitlin
Behn Zeitlin on his new film 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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