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Beasts of the Southern Wild

Probably the strangest Oscar nominee of the last few years, this movie takes a look at the love, anger and fight for survival between a dirt poor little girl named Hushpuppy and her father Wink.  They live in what looks to be some sort of island off the gulf coast known as  The Bathtub. The people here, all seem to have a story that binds them, yet we never hear it.  We don't know how they got there, but they are there and they are surviving off the land, much like our ancestors. They aren't wanted by 'civilized" and they don't want them in return.  When the two do finally meet, there is no understanding of each others world.

The movie is really a metaphor for us growing together, living and loving together and how if one of us breaks the Earth, it breaks it for everyone.  On the surface it's a beautiful, if not painful tale about a little girl who will never have, but is fine with what she  does have, as long as she has her father.  She longs for a mother she never really knew, but who through stories and dreams, has become a beacon (literally at times in the movie) of hope.  The movie fails in that we're constantly worried about this child, but we grow to know that she is stronger that any of us will be. It succeed in giving those of us who struggle a voice and a message.  It fails desperately in it's climactic scene, where we see the outcome coming a mile away, thanks to a very familiar commercial, but succeeds in allowing the father and child, and  i assume the audience, to let go.  In the end, it succeeds, because  Hush Puppy is the wondrous child in all of us, looking to survive, but more importantly, looking to make her mark on this world and become part of it and it's history.

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