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IMDbPro

Beasts of the Southern Wild

  • 20122012
  • PG-13PG-13
  • 1h 33m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
83K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
8,320
2,601
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Faced with her father's fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother.
Play trailer1:59
4 Videos
99+ Photos
AdventureDramaFantasy
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... Read allFaced 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.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.
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
83K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
8,320
2,601
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Director
      • Benh Zeitlin
    • Writers
      • Lucy Alibar(screenplay)
      • Benh Zeitlin(screenplay)
    • Stars
      • Quvenzhané Wallis
      • Dwight Henry
      • Levy Easterly
    Top credits
    • Director
      • Benh Zeitlin
    • Writers
      • Lucy Alibar(screenplay)
      • Benh Zeitlin(screenplay)
    • Stars
      • Quvenzhané Wallis
      • Dwight Henry
      • Levy Easterly
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 306User reviews
    • 640Critic reviews
    • 86Metascore
    • Nominated for 4 Oscars
      • 90 wins & 135 nominations total

    Videos4

    Best Picture Nominee
    Trailer 1:59
    Best Picture Nominee
    Gugu Mbatha-Raw Shares the Whimsical and Uplifting Films That Give Her Hope
    Clip 5:19
    Gugu Mbatha-Raw Shares the Whimsical and Uplifting Films That Give Her Hope
    Why 'Wendy' Is a Live-Action Peter Pan We Actually Want
    Clip 3:58
    Why 'Wendy' Is a Live-Action Peter Pan We Actually Want
    "We Stay Right Here"
    Clip 1:38
    "We Stay Right Here"

    Photos122

    Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Dwight Henry in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Benh Zeitlin and Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
    Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Quvenzhané Wallis
    Quvenzhané Wallis
    • Hushpuppy
    Dwight Henry
    Dwight Henry
    • Wink
    Levy Easterly
    Levy Easterly
    • Jean Battiste
    Lowell Landes
    • Walrus
    Pamela Harper
    • Little Jo
    Gina Montana
    Gina Montana
    • Miss Bathsheba
    Amber Henry
    • LZA
    Jonshel Alexander
    Jonshel Alexander
    • Joy Strong
    Nicholas Clark
    • Boy with Bell
    Joseph Brown
    • Winston
    Henry D. Coleman
    • Peter T
    Kaliana Brower
    • T-Lou
    Philip Lawrence
    Philip Lawrence
    • Dr. Maloney
    Hannah Holby
    • Open Arms Babysitter
    Jimmy Lee Moore
    • Sgt. Major
    Jovan Hathaway
    • The Cook
    Kendra Harris
    • Baby Hushpuppy
    Marilyn Barbarin
    • Cabaret Singer
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Benh Zeitlin
    • Writers
      • Lucy Alibar(screenplay) (stage play "Juicy and Delicious")
      • Benh Zeitlin(screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      On the film's very first day of shooting in the fictional "Bathtub" location outside of New Orleans, the BP oil rig explosion and the start of the massive spill occurred. For most of the shoot in nearby waters, Benh Zeitlin and his crew had to maneuver in and around the clean-up operations.
    • Goofs
      During the height of the hurricane scene, Wink challenges the storm, with his rifle, as a means of comforting Hushpuppy and alleviating her fears. While he is outside in the hurricane winds and rain, only the trees in his immediate vicinity are violently moving. Trees in the background (perhaps beyond the reach of a wind fan) are perfectly still.
    • Quotes

      [last lines]

      Hushpuppy: When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I'm a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they're gonna find it all. They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she live with her daddy in the Bathtub.

    • Connections
      Featured in The Big Review: Summer Trailer Park Series (2012)
    • Soundtracks
      Valse De Balfa
      Performed by The Lost Bayou Ramblers

      Written by Will Balfa

      Published by Flat Town Music Company (BMI)

    User reviews306

    Review
    Review
    Top review
    9/10
    The word is: Magic Realism
    What is so difficult to understand? If we suspend belief for Spiderman, The Hulk and King Kong why can't we believe in this story?

    I wonder whether some viewers are so addicted to the rhythm of plot driven movies to render them unable to appreciate a story like this, a story that sees the world through the eyes of a child who knows nothing of what we know. If you are one of those, go read somewhere else. I am not going to give you a synapse but my humble opinion on its meaning and possibly its intent. Or more surely, what I got out of it.

    The beauty of this movie lies in Hushpuppy, a child young enough to be nonjudgmental, and her vision of life and its inhabitants. She has her own wisdom and is, like all children, taking things quite literally.

    At first the hand-held camera-work and insufficient light-fill to illuminate the deep shades gave me the impression that this was a documentary style movie, a story reporting the lives of a group of people living off the grid in some southern state of the United States. But when I understood that the "Beasts" of the title was not a judgment of the movie's humans and their poverty, their ignorance, their unsophistication- but only an alternate noun for "animals" which the protagonists calls both her pets and humans alike, I started seeing the movie for what it really is: A dream, a fantasy, an imaginary story that merged with the contemporary awareness of global warming, and so a low tech sci-fi prediction of how the world may soon become.

    With that key I read most character's actions: the father figure who needs to train his child to survive, inciting her "to show her guns" and be self assured; the woman who teaches children the use of herbs to cure, the meaning of magic and mythology; the tolerance of the other adults for what, in a parallel reality, would definitively been child abuse. All this is righteously done to prepare the children to survive in a world that was(is?) going from merely hard to impossible.

    Wink's seemingly unsentimental and insensitive behavior towards the little wee child makes then perfect sense and thus his letting go when she can keep at bay, the Aurochs (a metaphor for her still childlike imagination) and her ability to step out of that world and into that of an adult ("I've got to take care of mine now") is the proof that she had grown up enough to survive on her own.

    Looking back to it, this movie is a miracle as improbable as that of La Vita é Bella, where Benigni infused humor in a story about the Holocaust without becoming offensive or demeaning. Beasts of a Southern Wild is able to merge a child's world with that of an adult; to make us see how the effects of global warming will challenge the lives of many; it is a comment and a reminder of Katrina, its victims and consequences; finally it is a poetic way of describing the world and its inhabitants, escaping the ugliness and despair of certain realities by converting it into hope, survival and beauty.
    helpful•43
    16
    • ignominia-1
    • Jan 9, 2013

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 5, 2012 (Russia)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official sites
      • Fox Searchlight
      • Official Facebook
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Quái Vât Miên Nam Hoang Dã
    • Filming locations
      • Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA
    • Production companies
      • Cinereach
      • Department of Motion Pictures
      • Court 13 Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,800,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $12,795,746
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $169,702
      • Jul 1, 2012
    • Gross worldwide
      • $21,107,746
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 33 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
      • Datasat
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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