Most of the reviews for this movie have been rapturous and I will admit that anything beats the lame sequels and overloud action movies we usually get in the summer.
But.
I didn’t get it. I saw it today and the little girl who stars in it was unbelievably good. Maybe that’s why this film made me so angry. What I saw was horrific child abuse and neglect of a beautiful little girl. She lived in filth and squalor with a bunch of drunk, careless adults who didn’t show an ounce of care or love for her. In addition, the movie was incoherent and the shaky handheld camera work seems to be an excuse for poor direction. Is the film popular simply because it’s so different that many people are willing to give it’s obvious flaws a pass? I don’t know. But I sure wish I had waited to see it on DVD and saved my money.
Most analysis of the film assumes it is post-apocalyptic of some variety, possibly with the adults being highly traumatized survivors. If you approach it from that direction it might make more sense, in any case it is a sure bet no one is going to care about squalor after the end of society as we know it.
Not that I am defending the film as a whole, I just think that criticism is misplaced.
Even if you were right that that’s all there is to the relationships between the little girl and the adults around her (and I personally don’t think you are), why would that somehow invalidate critical praise for the movie? Do you believe that there can’t be a good movie about bad people doing bad things?
This is actually a substantive criticism of the movie’s quality, and some of it I agree with: I didn’t enjoy the wiggly camera effect either. But I didn’t think it made the movie incoherent and I didn’t think the direction was poor.
I think you didn’t like the movie. That’s fine by me, but I mostly didn’t find your criticisms of it particularly insightful or persuasive.
Late to this (small) party. We just saw this movie. I agree with the shaky-cam work comment. Either make a good movie or don’t, but don’t try to pass that off as good movie-making. My take: People living in squalor aren’t necessarily completely unhappy. These people all knew their relevance to where they lived and to the people who lived there. When they were removed from that world and became one of a very large number, they were unable to function.
I didn’t care for the film, although the acting was pretty good. The editing was choppy, making it hard to follow at times. The rising water levels and the inclusion of the aurochs was unnecessary, other than in some sort of metaphorical sense. I don’t get all the hype for it.
Months late here, but I just saw this on DVD and didn’t see a more recent thread on it.
I liked it. The little girl was fascinating. Those people lived in squalor, but it was their home, it was where they belonged. I don’t think she was abused; quite the contrary she was loved and cared for by all the adults in the way that those people show love and care - teaching the children how to survive.
I also could have done without the aurochs, though. I guess they were supposed to represent impending destruction and a sense of foreboding and pay off when she is brave enough to stand up to them and conquer her fears – but it was a little cheesy and heavy-handed in practice.
Still I like to see a movie take chances and tell a different story about different people then what most movies are about, and this one did that so good for them.
I so much wanted Hush Puppy to stay in the shelter. Yes, ‘the Bathtub’ is home, but it’s a home where she’s as likely to burn to death heating up a can of beans when she’s 11 as she is to grow up. The only person worth a damn on the island is the teacher and she’s probably out of there asap.
Though I’ll have to watch it again on DVD because I remember being too worried about the dog to enjoy anything. Now that I know the dog made it through, I might like it better.
To me it was a movie about a bunch of people who didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, a trait which we are supposed to admire because it proves they’re genuine. I saw nothing to suggest they were living in a post-apocalyptic world. They just preferred to live in a mud pit, as opposed to those frauds who lived on the dry side of the levee.
I feel like some people are approaching this movie like it’s a social realist film about proud poor people eking out an existence at odds with a modern world, and then criticizing it for being sympathetic to what are otherwise stubborn, abusive, and ignorant individuals. It’s a children’s story, a fairytale! Or at least a magical realist film in the vein of Pan’s Labyrinth. The aurochs were an obvious clue, but also: Hushpuppy swimming/sailing to the Land of Lost Mothers, the bizarre raft terrorism episode, the insane architecture/boats they lived in, and their complete isolation from the rest of humanity, like some lost Amazonian tribe.
It wasn’t trying to romanticize a lifestyle so much as romanticize childhood at odds with very real, sometimes traumatic circumstances (poverty, Nature, death, institutions).
Also, why does everyone hate shaky-cam? I think it’s vibrant.
I liked this movie a lot. I’m also confused about the OP’s criticism’s of the movie–you know this wasn’t a documentary, right? It’s all made up. I’m not sure why the conditions you saw would make you so angry. Is it because you think the movie is arguing that this is a better lifestyle? I think that, in itself, is highly debatable. I don’t think that the movie was claiming this is some kind of paradise, or a good place to live. I think it’s a magical realism fable (as people have pointed out) about surviving the kind of extreme, almost unimaginable poverty that millions of people in this world * actually live in.* It’s about the difficulty of escaping from that kind of poverty, I think, as much as it is about literally escaping from a hurricane. It’s about doing the best you can in nearly unbearable circumstances.
I think that’s partly why I liked the movie so much–despite being fable-like, it was brutally straight-forward in its depiction of the life the people in the Bathtub lived, both in terms of pain and joy. Would you prefer this have been a moralizing tale about how Hushpuppy’s father died slowly in an over-crowded hospital and a pleasant social worker saved her and placed her in a home with a nice family? That’s not a movie.
I honestly didn’t mind or even notice the shaky-cam. I agree that the auroch sequences were somewhat tedious, however.
In this case I felt it was arty for artiness’ sake and I rather dislike that in film. Too self-conscious, too pretentious. End of the day it has its moments, but I fall into the ‘overrated’ camp.
Also real aurochs didn’t look like that - what a stupid kid :p.
The girl was amazing, but it does bring up the question: is it really acting at that age? Where is the line between a phenomenal performance and genuine acting? Does it make her performance more authentic and raw?
She was the best part about the movie. I hated the father, hated the bathtub.
I thought it was fine. A nice little movie but nothing special. I don’t get all the acclaim for it or know why it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.
