This was a phenomenal film. I’m not alone in this opinion. But beyond the acting of the young girl in the film, and beyond the story itself, there was one staggeringly beautiful attribute that this film possessed.
The setting.
I’m not talking about The Bathtub, or even the “deep south."
By setting, I mean the foundation that the story rests upon. That foundation is…
Poverty. Not the sort of poverty that we see every day in the breakfast lines of our public schools, or on the streets of our aging inner ring suburbs. The poverty that undergirds Beasts of the Southern Wild is something entirely different.
The setting is nearly post-apocalyptic in its visual and textural elements. There are remnants of a post-industrial society evident in The Bathtub, but they seem out of place to the people who subsist somewhat happily (in spite or the turmoil and destruction) among the wreckage. These are a people who forage, fish and farm what they need, and they seem happier in that reality than most of us do amongst the gears of capitalism and consumerism.
That striking discontinuity between the lack of consumerism and the abundance of satisfaction is perhaps one of the most beautiful elements in an amazing film.