Exit
on Earth,” says Hushpuppy, who
shares her father’s contempt for
the conformists on the other side
of the levee. “They’re afraid of the
water like a bunch of babies. They
built the wall that cut us off.”
Pretty is not the first word
that springs to mind, despite the
breathtaking production design
and cinematography. These are
wild people, with weathered faces
and bodies, surrounded by trash
and detritus, and most of the
adults are permanently attached
to bottles of booze. But residents
of our overscheduled, overanalyzed world are likely to envy their
fiery passions, their untethered
freedom and their visceral connection to the water. Wink has instructed Hushpuppy to light him
on fire and send him out to sea if
he’s ever too sick to drink beer or
catch catfish. The alternative, being hospitalized and “plugged into
the wall,” is just too humiliating
to contemplate.
Like all Earthly Utopias, this one
faces mortal danger — from nature, which sends an apocalyptic
hurricane to test the Bathtub residents’ stubborn commitment to
staying put; from the government,
which wants to relocate them to
someplace more civilized; and from
MOVIES
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
the rough beasts of the title, who
slouch through Hushpuppy’s fevered imagination, threatening untold annihilation to The Bathtub.
Will they destroy her, or will the
losses she suffers at this tender age
only make her stronger? There’s
never much doubt, thanks in part
to the revelatory performances by
Wallis and Henry, who together
form one of the least orthodox
daughter-and-father combinations
Pretty is not the first word
that springs to mind, despite
the breathtaking production
design and cinematography.”
ever. She is wise and strong beyond her years, without ever sacrificing a shred of her childishness;
he can be childish, too, and maddeningly so, but it’s impossible not
to admire his relentless efforts to
equip his daughter to protect and
provide for herself.
Zeitlin, whose mother and father are both folklorists (really),
never lets the story’s magic-realist
elements get in the way of the human drama. The film packs an
emotional wallop — one strong
enough to seduce the seen-it-