ACADEMY AWARDS: BEST PICTURE #2: BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD  **** out of **** (highest rating)

I did not think I was going to think much of this film.  I felt the marketing I saw and reviews that I read gave off a vibe similar to Terrence Malick's 2011 critical-darling TREE OF LIFE, a film which I found to be woefully boring and pretentious, despite all it's ambition.  With BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD though, I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's impossible to put into writing just what this film is, because it is "pure film"; a story that can hardly exist within any other medium.
Basically, the plot entails the adventures of a 6 years-old girl named Hushpuppy, played with Oscar-nominated vigor by newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis, with her hot-tempered father Wink, played by fellow newcomer Dwight Henry, in a forsaken bayou community called The Bathtub, cut off from the rest of Louisiana by the levees.  The Bathtub is a film world of its own, like Pandora in James Cameron's AVATAR or Oz in Victor Fleming's THE WIZARD OF OZ.  It's a place out of time, with seemingly post-apocalyptic touches and a salty demeanor, where almost everything floats on the water, and everyone is a close, if sometime cantankerous friend.  The inhabitants of The Bathtub are a wildly bizarre assortment of rednecks, riverfolk, yarn spinners and Creoles, with a diet of raw crustaceans and grilled gator among other things.  The does not have a very focused narrative, but this is never to its detriment because the film is endlessly gripping, largely carried by Wallis' perfect performance.  Her's is the best child performance in recent memory, providing Hushpuppy with a well-mixed combination of hearty grit, childlike wonder and an earthy outlook and giving a marvelous commentary-like narration of the ongoing events.  The story and structure reminded me of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, with its loose, episodic narrative about life on the water, and Hushpuppy's strained, but ultimately much more loving, relationship with her father. 
The film teeters often between wondrous fantasy, gritty reality and just plain oddball scenarios, such as loading an alligator carcass with explosives in an attempt to demolish a levee, and it's never really clear which tonal perspective is the real, or dominant one, but it seems to all be happening through Hushpuppy.  There's a childlike wonder to this world; not a pretentious or false one, but one of seemingly complete honesty.  There's peril and tragedy and a healthy portion of gut-bustingly bizarre humor, and when all is said and done, it leaves you with much to consider.