Beasts of Burden: My Oscar Eve Critique

"Give me liberty or give me death." Patrick Henry's impassioned speech to the Virginia House of Burgess convinced states to commit troops to the Revolutionary War effort. This included rousing a then little known Virginian planter by the name of George Washington. It's a pretty important speech.

Throughout Henry's diatribe, British tyranny over the colonies evokes imagery of "shackles," "chains," and "slavery." Yet, the "freedom loving" founding father, at the time of his speech, was holding no fewer than 65 African American slaves. When rivals called Henry out on this fact, he famously quipped, "it is too inconvenient to live without them" (Henry). Liberty, indeed, Pat! Give me liberty, or give me death...but don't make me fetch my own slippers...for the love of God!

In short, Patrick Henry was saying something very familiar to modern Americans. It echoes each time we uses paper towels to wipe our hands or buy Hummers so sixteen-year-old daughters can commute to jobs at Hot Topic! Patrick Henry was saying, "I'll face death, but I won't face inconvenience."

Liberty is funny that way. Today, many Americans have an equally complex and hypocritical relationship with the word. It's conjured by the Declaration of Independence. It's guaranteed in the Constitution. But is liberty about rights, or just conveniences?

When we speak of "liberty," we use words like defend, protect, uphold, and promote. But in truth, often, we use "liberty" to describe things we really, really, really "want" to do, but probably don't "need to do." We use liberty to defend thinking that is inherently dangerous or self-promoting. In short, liberty = want disguised as need.



Carrying a concealed firearm as you walk through a playground? That's liberty. While we may gain social consensus on it being a really bad idea, we'll never gain consensus on whether or not it is a worthwhile liberty. Telling inappropriately racist jokes at the church potluck, again? Well, you may have offended Deacon Weisback, but what the heck? It's a free country...take your liberties! Hundred ounce sodas! Trans fats! Pop rocks and Coke! Who cares if it's good for you. Liberty can be so delicious.

Beasts of the Southern Wild, at its core, is a film about personal liberties. In it, a community of trashy cretins live in the "Bathtub," an unprotected, unleavened part of outlying New Orleans so far below sea level that is makes Ocean City look like the Appalachians.

These people, for lack of better coinage, live as Eric Cartman would describe, by "doing wot they WANT."

They party through their days swigging whiskey and leaving their children neglected, abused and un-educated. They teeter between "not giving a damn" and "not knowing any better." They sustain on seafood only, and apparently, an off-camera, all-night liquor store. Because though the characters are cut off from humanity, they seem to have a magically eternal supply of brown booze. They cavort, convulse and otherwise cohort to dodge social services, stay in the "Bathtub" and raise their children in honor of the same.

Behn Zeitlin, the film's wonder boy director and co-screenwriter, wants us to think this is all pretty noble stuff. These are "salt of the Earth" type of people. I know, it's hard to imagine such over-romanticism from a guy who spells "Ben" with a silent "h." But the film's pith is that liberty, at any price, is the catalyst for a life well lived.

 At the end, this over-indulgence in the beauty of squalor is why Beasts fails. It's supposed to be a character study on people whose drive for a life of noble, liberty-dripping simplicity, but the film forgets that the audience needs to "like" these characters in order to see value in their way of life.

At the center of it all is Hushpuppy, played with ineffable adorableness by Scrabble quadruple word score five-year-old actress Quvenzhane Wallis. Hushpuppy and her single, titular father Wink, also played with aplomb by a baker-turned-actor named Dwight Henry, leads the members of the Bathtub through a Katrina-like storm that devastates the basin. But Wink is also terminally ill. Together, they embark on a series of rites of passage to meant to "toughen up" Hushpuppy.

After all, the goal is for her to remain in the unimaginable filth of the Bathtub after Wink dies. This would be the noble thing to do. Wink's final wish is that his daughter never leave their Deliverance-like extended family of scary, water-logged Cajuns. Apparently, Hushpuppy would be unhappy someplace that is neither physically nor emotionally damaging. So Wink teaches her to punch a catfish, "beast" a crab and other seafood-centered displays of awkwardly inappropriate manhood. In one scene he calls her the "p-word." Yes, that "p-word." It's supposed to be real and purposeful, but instead seems overly divisive and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, to add to the strangeness, a group of giant, Maurice Sendak-like boars are rushing toward the Bathtub to...um....well, actually, no one ever explains what they are supposed to be doing. And Hushpuppy spends ten minutes being consoled by a prostitute waitress who may, or may not, be her mother. By the time Wink's man-tear-filled death scene comes, I found myself wishing he had died days ago.

Wink is meant to emerge as the emotional center of the movie, but I couldn't even like him. He had the emotional resonance of Gargamel, with a similar accent. He spends too much of the film being drunk and neglectful, too little redeeming any parental value for the moment of his death to hold impact. Overall, I'm supposed to love the backwoods candor of Zeitlin's rag-tag group of cat-food eaters. But after only a few "aww shucks" moments, their charm wears thin. Their antics are not endearing. Most of them are left wholly un-developed. The only thing sad about Beasts of the Southern Wild is how easily taken the American public can be with a few poor people expounding their right to liberty.

There is one redemption:

Hushpuppy's stirring, rapid-fire, slice-of-life opening montage, in which she runs, sparkler-fisted and silhouetted, towards the camera, results in a beautiful cinematic moment. The Falcon predicts this image will be the most over-played of tomorrow's Oscar telecast (with the possible exception of the Denzel plane crash).

Ultimately, I wanted to like Beasts. And believe me, Beasts wants to like itself, too. The film is about as self-important as a Fursin fist bump. But by the time the credits roll, the characters had failed to engage me. The prevailing problems with Beasts are best surmised by the main character herself. Hushpuppy tells us that "the whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece...the whole universe will get busted." True. Both for the universe and for the film.

RESOURCES

Breznican, Anthony. "'Beasts' Little Girl Gets Nods."Entertainment Weekly. 11 2012: n. page. Web. 11
     Dec. 2012. .

Henry, Patrick. "On Slavery." Patrick Henry, January 18, 1773 (1773): n.pag. Virginia State Library. 
     Web. 11 Dec 2012. .

Scott, Mike. "Dwight Henry Honored by LA Film Critics Group." Times-Picayne [New Orleans] 10 012
      2012, n. pag. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.