Monday, September 3, 2012

Beasts of the Southern Wild




Beasts of the Southern Wild is not realistic. It is most dreamlike, except when real things happen. One of these things is when the six year old girl named Hushpuppy sets the kitchen on fire. Until then, she had been careful enough to take out her flame proof helmet from her freezer in order to start the gas flame with a blow torch. But something bothered her enough to make her take a stand which involved burning her house down. Before that, she was just trying to cook herself some dinner.

This is just one of the scenes in the movie leaving the audience an emotional mess. You are torn between thinking logically when will an adult be a responsible parent to when will this brave little girl get to stop being seen as a child so that she can ditch the useless grown ups in her life. The logic is there, but it gets half way up your brain and then stops because logic is not operating in this movie.

Young children who are abandoned in one way or another must learn to take care of themselves. In this movie they learn not to feel sorry for themselves.

Among some of the questions I found myself asking were these. How can a boat made out of a pickup truck bed float? How did this girl of six learn to say her lines with such force and clarity that I went home reciting them in my own head?


If this is a reverie on children and people left behind to live in poverty, it has pretty brilliant visuals for the most part. For one thing it creates a place outside of the grid. The people here are independent, feral almost. They are the wild in the Southern wild. The beasts (that remind me a little of Maurice Sendak's in Where the Wild Things Are) come to claim the land that has been ruined by the hurricane. People can't live there anymore. As the actor who plays Wink, Hushpuppy's father, says:

"He's resilient," Henry said, explaining why audiences are so drawn to Wink. "He's a resilient person, and people love resilience -- and people love people that stand behind and stand for things that they love more than anything in the world. And this group of people (in 'Beasts'), they're standing behind the things they love, the people they love, their culture their beliefs that they won't leave under the worst circumstances in the world. These people won't abandon the things they love more than anything in life."

"The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece, the entire universe will get busted."

Still, it was hard watching Hushpuppy who never does anything wrong get beaten and abandoned by her father, and also watching a bunch of adults get sloppy drunk over and over again as if that is the only way to celebrate.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Lil Buck

Lil Buck: Aria on Nowness.com.


I love the editing of this movie, how movement in one scene is picked up in a completely different location and continued.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Sleepwalk with Me




The stand up comedian has a pretty bad act. He tends bar, and fills in when he’s needed, but he gets bad feedback. People don’t like his act.

What the stand up comedian has is a pretty great girlfriend. She is helpful, cheerful, undemanding, understanding, all the things we want in a really great friend, let alone lover and longstanding live in girlfriend.

Everything starts to change when the comedian’s sister gets married after living with her boyfriend for a much shorter time than the comedian has been living with his exemplary girlfriend.

Lauren Ambrose, who plays Abby, the comedian's girlfriend

People start to ask questions. When are you getting married? What’s the plan? These questions are sort of rude but somehow not unexpected, and the comedian realizes that he does not want to get married.

This leads to a rather startling turn of events, most of which involve his sleep walking. He begins to imagine that wild animals are going to kill him, or that he is under the gun, or that he is at the heart of the end of the world. His sleepwalking is not just a benign and humorous disruption. It results in serious injury and drastic emergency treatment.

I have never seen a movie like this, but then, when has This American Life ever been like any other entertainment that has grabbed you by the lapels and said sit down and listen to this? Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia have created a unique type of movie, one that takes the audio of the stories told on This American Life and added brilliant actors like Lauren Ambrose.

I hope that many many people will see it. It is pretty great. In the process of the movie, the comedian learns what to write about in his act, and people end up really liking it. It is very funny.