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JON CARAMANICA
beasts of the Southern wild depicts ordinary people facing hardship. Quvenzhan wallis, right.
album, is pure unflustered seduction in the singing, but the lyric is tragic. I gave my best/it wasnt enough, he coos. We made a mess of what used to be love/so why do I care at all? Usher is the rare artist emboldened by his missteps, while R. Kelly seems to have been cowed by his. Mr. Kellys implicit response to this issue has been to cleanse his music altogether. Usher has done the opposite, cleansing himself through confession. Write Me Back, Mr. Kellys new album, is for him tepid that is, technically accomplished, but lacking the snakelike vocal slither and moist subject matter that mark him at his most virtuosic. His legal issues seem to have taken away Mr. Kellys ability to be romantically forceful or to use any of the unfortunate metaphors that link sex to violence. Mr. Brown has been the least ar-
MONTEGUT, Louisiana The filmmaker Benh Zeitlin has an intuitive way of letting real people and places work their way into the mythical stories of his imagination. His short film Glory at Sea (2008) is about a band of mourners who build a boat from storm debris and rescue their loved ones trapped underwater. Mr. Zeitlin, 29, had planned to film abroad, but on a 2006 visit to New Orleans, he felt the story in his head connect with the period after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005. The premise was that the residents of a community could band together in a wild, reckless movement of hope, he said recently. And I felt that start to happen when I got down here. Mr. Zeitlins first feature film, Beasts of the Southern Wild (now showing in the United States; featured at the Munich film festival on June 30; in wide release through summer and fall in Europe), creates another richly imagined universe rooted in his connection to an actual place and the people there. The debut won awards at Sundance and Cannes. Writing in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis said the film was hauntingly beautiful both visually and in the tenderness it shows toward the characters, and The Timess A. O. Scott called it a blast of sheer, improbable joy. Shot on a limited budget with nonprofessional actors in remote southern Louisiana, Beasts is set in a mythologized bayou called the Bathtub, a harsh utopia cut off from civilization by a levee but pulsating with natural beauty and the raucous, defiant spirit of its inhabitants. At the films core is tiny Hushpuppy (Quvenzhan Wallis, only 6 at the time of shooting) and her magical way of making sense of her world: the absence of her mother; the failing health of her
father, Wink (Dwight Henry); and the storm that threatens to wash her world away. When you look at the map, you can see America kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up, said Mr. Zeitlin. I was really interested in these roads that go all the way down to the bottom of America and what was at the end of them. What he found were the bayou fishing towns of Terrebonne Parish. Relatively unscathed by Katrina but hit hard by subsequent hurricanes, Terrebonne has a vibrant culture that extends to the edge of the Mississippi Deltas vanishing wetlands. On his first trip he drove down a narrow road, halfsunk in water, leading to the tiny Isle de Jean Charles. Only 40 years
folklorists, inherited their passion for finding art and poetry in ordinary life. He developed the script over eight months in Terrebonne and was all but adopted by a family there. Despite the films myth and fantasy, scenes in the Bathtub channel the feeling of hanging out in a bayou bar, at a crab boil, and at one of South Louisianas exuberant celebrations, one of the most powerful ways the region copes with tragedy. I didnt put anyone or anything in the movie that I didnt have awe and love and respect for, Mr. Zeitlin said. The films intimacy has much to do with the nonprofessional actors who bring the central relationship to life. Mr. Henry is a baker, and Quvenzhan Wallis, a sprite who holds the cameras attention with a charismatic poise that might make grown-up movie stars weep in envy, said The Times, was chosen from some 3,500 Louisiana children. The crew, a small army of artists and filmmakers from across the country (Beasts is a production of the film collective Court 13), built the Bathtub with found artifacts and rusted-out equipment, and the spirit of self-sufficiency and resourcefulness that characterizes rural southern Louisiana suffused the set. On the first day of the shoot the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the gulf, and the filmmakers were getting word that the approaching oil could shut down the fishing industry for years. I was rewriting scenes as we were going based on moments that we were experiencing with this sort of dread, Mr. Zeitlin said. But his story remained hopeful: a modern-day Louisiana folk tale about the power of a tiny subculture obscure, imperiled, but with more holidays than anyplace else on earth to fight back against terrific forces of nature.
Samir huSSein/getty imageS for american expreSS, left; robyn beck/agence france-preSSe, center; chad batka for the new york timeS
r&bs top male stars: usher, left to right, chris brown, r. kelly.