Internal Storms

Beasts Of The Southern Wild 

 Directed by Benh Zeitlin

Beasts Of The Southern Wild is a southern gothic fantasy film about a 6 year old named Hushpuppy living in a fictional soon to be flooded southern coastall town of Bathtub.

The town has been all but abandoned, save for a few who insist on weathering the storm. Hushpuppy's father takes ill which coincides with the ice caps thawing and releasing prehistoric auroch's, who resemble the giant tusked hogs from Hayoa Miyazake's Princess Mononoke, and appear to be closing in on Bathtub.

Hurricane Katrina is inevitably mentioned in connection to this film, as I imagine will the ongoing (at the time of writing this) Hurricane Issac, but similarities can be misleading.

Katrina as a political issue concerned global warming but more importantly human mismanagement of levys, emergency units, city, state, and national governance, none of which despite a quick trip to a FEMA shelter concerns this film.

The FEMA shelter in the film is not a condemnation of anything other than architecture and appearances.

The antiseptic whiteness and sterile brightness are an obscene counterpoint to the happy rural filth(and it is filthy), the characters seem most comfortable in. Of course, the filth is theirs and can be cleaned up, while the antiseptic world they will never own and always owe. 

Hushpuppy is all but a-sexual, until the shelter forces her into barrettes and a dress. The shelter is an intrusion of the real world, her being a girl, her fathers approaching death, of her poverty (up until then cloaked by those around her equally in the same boat), of the larger forces in the world that can take control of her. 

The film makes no attempt of explaining the details of their capture or their escape. Nor is it necessary to explain why a local fisherman would take a group of girls to an island brothel. 

We never even see the girls ask. In the brothel/bar several prostitutes slow dance with the young soaking wet girls in one of the films more surreal Herzogian scenes, which can be interpreted many ways. The girls as the innocence of the women or the women as the future of the girls. 

It's an ambiguity left open, just as the question of Hushpuppy's mother is never really answered. Beasts Of The Southern Wild is a coming of age tale, though how much of the complexities of life can be understood at six is debatable.

Hushpuppy learns of a world outside her own, pains and joys, the film is simple in this. And its simplicity is one of its strengths. 

 The poetic voice over will remind some of David Gordon Green and Terrance Malick, as will I'm sure some of the hand held nature photography, but this has more in common with films like Terry Gilliam's "Tideland" or Bernad Rose's "Paperhouse", oneiric fantasy's where a character's perspective transforms the world around them to such an extent that the two are indivisible. 

Beasts Of The Southern Wild shares many similarities with Moonrise Kingdom, since both are about renewed vision of the world through the eyes of children, both about shorelines, storms, love and community, but also some important distinctions that its important to look at when evaluating your reaction to the two. 

Moonrise Kingdom takes place in a middle class community, has an entirely white cast (a first in an Anderson film), and a very formalist style of composition.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild is takes place in a poor community, has a mixed but predominantly black cast, a very naturalist style of composition. 

Moonrise Kingdom is the stronger film because it relies on a less extreme range of emotions, a more stable territory of comedy and dramedy that it can more easily control.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild has slightly more dramatic ambitions, which it only missteps toward the end with some excessive voice over recapping the themes of the film, that would be have been better left to the viewer to reach through reflection if at all.

I'm not normally so swept up in texture, mood, and atmosphere mostly because I feel that films which rely on these too often rely on their absence, but Beasts Of The Southern Wild is a film filled, with color, light, and life, imperfect and snarling.

 

Songs Of Innocence And Experience

Moonrise Kingdom(2012) 

Directed By Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" is a return to the subjects the filmmaker knows best, childhood's excitement and adult compromise and disillusionment. 

This story follows a young boy and girl in the 1960's who run away together to live in the woods and follow and Indian trail, while the girls parents and the local sheriff (who are also in a romantic tangle of their own) try to track down the kids.

Edward Norton also plays the boy's scout master who unleashes his politely feral troop to track down their wayward peer, with continuously disastrous results.

And all the while, a narrator (one of Anderson's best characters) periodically informs us a storm is approaching the small Iisland where this is all taking place.

The simplest way to describe Wes Anderson's sensibilities I think is to say in his films adults act children and children act like adults.

The same could be said obviously of any comedy featuring childish behavior, but in Anderson's films the idea is more ingrained into the fabric of his cinema.

"The Royal Tennenbaums" features characters wearing the same clothes as adults they wore as children frozen in an era of their lives they were happiest and moving back into their childhood homes to explore old psychological wounds, "The Life Aquatic" features a young man meeting his hero and long-lost father and living out his childhood fantasy (Cate Blanchett's character is an inverted version of same), Jason Shwartzman's desire to remain at Rushmore forever and Bill Murray accepting his challenge as a rival, Mr. Fox's need to relive his glory days with just one more big heist, even at the expense of his family and friends, the brothers in "The Darjeeling Limited" fighting over their fathers clothes while seeking out their wayward mother, and Owen Wilson trying to get his life together without betraying his bumbling childhood friend in "Bottle Rocket" captured at best in microcosm in the opening scene of that film.

A scene that would pretty much define the rest of Anderson's work.

At the beginning of "Bottle Rocket", Luke Wilson is saying preparing a bed sheet rope to escape through a window when a doctor comes in, and noticing, Wilson explains he has a friend who didn't know he was getting released today and was really excited about breaking him out. He asks if the doctor wouldn't mind just playing along.

 It would mean allot to his friend.

 Likewise in "Moonrise Kingdom" a young boy might for a moment existentially reflect on the irrelevance of morality in the life and death of a dog. To perfect comic effect.

 All of which is of secondary importance to the fact that this is Anderson's most exciting and adventurous film since "The Life Aquatic" and his most genuinely romantic since Claire Danes slow-motion walked to "These Days" in "The Royal Tennenbaum's". 

"Moonrise Kingdom" finds an accessible balance between ambition and execution, that had missing in his last two films, and sorely missing in most cinema in general.

In its opening virtuoso scene that juxtaposes, in cinematic terms anyone would understand, scenes of domestic life with instructional music about various instruments in a symphony, Anderson shows us that characters in his worlds are always parts of a bigger whole.

No matter how minor, each character, color, and sound must be taken together completely to fully appreciate. 

 Some might argue that all of these films are simply retreading the same path, and I would agree but also add, that is the point.

Like the runaways themselves retracing an old Indian path, its new because, its new to them.

The beach they discover has only a numerical assignment, an objectively identical point on a map, until they decide to rename it "Moonrise Kingdom". 

Nostalgia's Revenge

Super 8(2011)
Directed By J. J. Abrams

The zombie film the kids were making before the train blew up had more going for it than anything that actually happens in "Super 8". "Mars Attacks" is retro sci-fi at full throttle, this film is a nostalgia trip for fans of classic Steven Spielberg films. "You've gotta put that scene in, so that later on the audience cares who get's eaten" a young director says to his crew, a lame brained excuse for the useless funeral prologue, melancholy lead and his forced star-crossed puppy wuv. When we finally see what all the fuss is about it's a beast with a tediously predictable origin (like something a unimaginative ten year old would come up with) and even worse it looks exactly like the beast from Cloverfield, just smaller and less intimidating. No effort seems to have gone into designing an original looking monster at all, which if there is a bare minimum I want out of a monster movie its just that.I enjoyed most of "Lost", "Fringe", and liked "Cloverfield", but "Star Trek" was awful and this even worse. The kids were lame except for the little pyro, the camaraderie and chemistry of kid team-ups like "Monster Squad", "The Goonies", and to a lesser extent Robert Rodriguez's wonky but still unique, "Spy Kids" series, is absent here, and the dead parent drama that is supposed to connect all the dramatic plots together, rings hollow and cloying like the even flatter and blander "Monsters".The train sequence is the only portion of the film that approaches genuine spectacle, the rest is just non-threatening and often barely palpable suspense. If you've forgotten what a good monster movie for the whole family can be re-watch "The Host".
Not to mention the great giant-fighting mockumentaries "Troll Hunter" and "Big Man Japan". The hype machine behind "Cloverfield" when all was said and done seemed appropriate, while in "Super 8" the mystery is a let down, because it's basically "Cloverfield" with some hallmark card and completely unearned "E.T." sentimentality, that doesn't promote the humanism (of the film's it apes) so much as justify the cynicism that leads audiences to "Rampage" and "The Human Centipede" to get their thrills.
"X-Men: First Class" and especially the surprising "Attack The Block" were retro, youthful, relevant, dramatic, had unique action set pieces, and didn't need to explain to us why we are supposed to be care about a character, it made us feel it. Compare the openings sequences of these three films, and its easy to see why Super 8 goes so wrong. Its restrained tone of domestic does not sharpen or highlight the domestic drama its just hopelessly anchored by it. I was hoping the jolly fat kid would have been the lead, his crush on the lead actress could have been cute and offered opportunities for much needed lightness. Instead with the mop topped sad kid she gets to emote about dark secrets and second hand guilt. What an adventure. I never thought I would say this but Micheal Bay would have made this a film worth seeing, it might not be good, but it would at least be worth seeing.
"Super 8" is not worth seeing.