By CANTON WINER

MANAGING EDITOR

Movies often carry us off to distant lands. Battles waged with sabers on the deserts of Arabia, brunch beneath the Eiffel Tower with Ernest Hemingway, life aboard a spaceship in a galaxy far, far away. The limits are essentially endless.

Beasts of the Southern Wild takes us to the Bathtub, an imaginary (but all too realistic) poverty-plagued island cutoff from the mainland. The Bathtub is characterized by streets made of swamp tributaries and neighborhoods made of ramshackle trailer homes, slapdash shacks and overturned oil barrels. But to Hushpuppy, the fierce six-year-old protagonist who lives there, the Bathtub is “the prettiest place on Earth.”

At its simplest level, this is the story of a community rocked and destroyed by the surge of a hurricane. The pangs of pain wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans ring clear and true in Beasts of the Southern Wild, but the richness of this story cannot be simplified to merely that of a community facing a storm.

 Hushpuppy is facing her own storm, her own beasts. Never knowing her mother, Hushpuppy struggles to find stability while living with her alcoholic, hot-tempered but ferociously loving father, Wink. Though only six, Hushpuppy is living her own coming-of-age story, and she lives it with a beauty and intensity unrivaled by any that I have ever seen.

On top of being forced to face a motherless childhood, a volatile home situation and the destruction of her community, there are literal beasts that Hushpuppy must face. These are not, however, beasts you have ever heard of. Aurochs, giant mytho-prehistoric boars unleashed by the melting polar ice caps, storm toward the Bathtub to confront Hushpuppy.

Visually stunning, Beasts of the Southern Wild could stand on its cinematography alone. Yet the music is one of the film’s most elegant components. A gorgeous blend of Cajun, blues, zydeco and more, the score perfectly complements the film’s lyricism. The quirky interweaving of sounds as distinct as accordion, fiddle, celesta and pop beats is rich in emotion and irresistibly alluring.

The acting is also incredible. Director Benh Zeitlin masterfully cobbles together a team of nonprofessional actors to create not only an American fable, but also a masterpiece. Wink, for example, is played by Dwight Henry, a bakery owner in the New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. Even more impressively, at age nine, Quvenzhané Wallis (who plays Hushpuppy) deservedly became the youngest Academy Award nominee for Best Actress in history. She captures Hushpuppy’s and the Bathtub’s primal energy, and gives an absolutely unforgettable performance.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a movie that everyone should see. Its richness allows the story to become whatever each individual makes of it. An explosion of Americana, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a coming-of-age bildungsroman evocative of To Kill a Mockingbird, a story of self-reliance against the safety nets of an industrialized world, a story of a community stubbornly resisting the rising waters surrounding it.

Movies truly do bring us to unfamiliar places. Beasts of the Southern Wild takes us to a land bursting with vitality and transports us to a remote emotional place. This movie is an experience that no one should miss.