7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.9 |
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.
Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Henry D. Coleman, Levy Easterly, Pamela HarperDrama | 100% |
Coming of age | 24% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy (on disc)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Like any indie film that’s ambitious and imaginative and thematically loaded, Beasts of the Southern Wild has been subjected to its share of
both gushing, hyberbolic praise and the outrage of overly sensitive critics and cultural academics. The Sundance Festival favorite has been hailed as a
jubilant coming-of-age story and waved off as pretentious, sentimental slush. It’s been alternately praised and denounced as a reaction to
Hurricane Katrina, and it’s variously been labeled a surefire Oscar contender and—absurdly, really, considering some of the truly awful multiplex fare
available this year—the worst film of 2012. It only goes to show how subjective a cinematic experience can be. To some, Beasts of the Southern
Wild is an empowering tale of a young girl and her community overcoming victimization; to others, it’s a romanticization of black rural poverty,
couched in uncomfortable racial and gender stereotypes.
Most audiences, though, will enjoy the film, and for many good reasons. It’s fully deserving of the adjective “life-affirming.” It’s funny and
harrowing and gorgeously shot. It’s been put together with an impressive level of authentic, do-it-yourself detail, and it features the best performances
by non-professional actors in recent memory. While there are certainly some fair criticisms to be leveled here, I think the haters and naysayers—who
are in the minority—have reacted with knee-jerk cynicism to misperceived slights in political correctness. I appreciate their vocal denunciation, though,
if only because it stirs up debate. As the history of cinema shows, the most controversial and divisive films tend to be the ones that are fertile with
ideas worthy of discussion.
Wink and Hushpuppy
Beautifully shot on 16mm, Beasts of the Southern Wild arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that may not be as sharp or clean as most modern movies—shot digitally or on 35mm—but has a gritty, textured, handmade quality that's perfect for the tone of the low-budget film. Shooting on 16mm essentially halves the analog resolution and doubles the size of the grain, so you should expect a picture that's inherently somewhat soft and chunky. That's not to say watching the film in high definition doesn't have immediately visible benefits over DVD. In 1080p, the patina of the grain is more natural, the details more refined, the lines tighter and the skin and clothing details better resolved. (Do your own comparison —a DVD is included in the Blu-ray set.) Basically, you're getting a more faithful, filmic, true-to-source presentation. There's no sign of digital noise reduction here, no edge enhancement, and no glaring compression or encode issues. If the image isn't super-sharp, it makes up for it with great color gradation; highlights have a slightly creamy cast, the palette of earth tones is rich and dense, and contrast balances a punchy tonal curve with preserved shadow detail. This is probably the best-looking 16mm film I've seen on Blu-ray since Revanche.
The film's meager budget in no way constrains its well-engineered sound design, which is presented here in a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. From the very first frames we're aurally immersed in the story's world, with gusts of wind and rippling thunder emerging from the rear channels. This sense of you're-here-in-The-Bathtub-too engagement is consistent throughout the film. Every scene comes alive with natural ambience—insects and birds, torrential rain, lapping water, the rustle of leaves, sheets of ice collapsing into the sea. The more hefty effects are just as convincing; explosions send debris spraying in all directions, helicopter blades beat overhead, the noble Aurochs roots and grunts and stampedes. Backing it up is a Creole-tinged Americana score—by composer Dan Romer and director Benh Zeitlin—that soars and rattles, providing the emotional undercurrent for each scene. (You'll have the main theme stuck in your head for weeks.) Everything is grounded, clear, and dynamically expressive, and the dialogue glides through it all unhindered, clean and easily understood. The disc includes optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles, a Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital dub, and a descriptive audio track.
As a directorial debut, as a story of empowerment, and as a work of great imagination and beauty, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a joy. It's layered enough to provoke a wide range of audiences responses—always the sign of a film that's at least interesting, if not good—and it features a courageous performance from the young newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis, a total scene and heart-stealer. A lot of love clearly went into the making of this film, and that's something its critics seem to have missed. That love carries over to the movie's Blu-ray debut, which features a gorgeous 1080p transfer, an immersive audio track, and some worthwhile extras, including a nicely put-together making-of documentary, audition tapes, and director Benh Zeitlin's short film, Glory at Sea. Highly recommended!
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