The Trent Film Society will host its second screening at Market Hall on Wednesday, October 23, beginning at 8pm. Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild has received much praise and many awards since its release last year.

Zeitlin’s film pairs well with our first screened film at Market Hall, Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson, also from 2012. Both films have children as the protagonists, and both have a sense of magical realism because we like to assume that the way children see the world, unperturbed by the cynicism of adulthood, is a bit like magic.

Beasts is the story of Hushpuppy, a six-year-old who resides in a small village in Louisiana called The Bathtub. Following a severe storm that floods The Bathtub, residents must work together to continue living, and, eventually, solve the flood problem by themselves.

On the surface, Beasts is an allegory for Hurricane Katrina and the events surrounding the disaster, but Zeitlin seems reluctant to make any strong political critique.

On the one hand, I think he was much more interested in how residents can triumph in the worst circumstances, and on the other, the movie is more concerned with Hushpuppy’s perspective of the events taking place.

From her point of view, the people around her are strange, and at times disconcerting, thus the beasts of the title. The more obvious beasts are the large, fantastical prehistoric creatures called Aurochs, which, throughout the film, seem to be drawing nearer and nearer to The Bathtub. The meaning of the Aurochs is left up to us to decipher for ourselves.

Critics have praised the cinematography, performances of non-professional actors, and heart-wrenching drama. However, the characters depicted have been cause for anxiety.

American author, bell hooks, sees a pornography of violence and a racist and sexist view of the young Hushpuppy. I therefore encourage readers and our potential viewers to not just to see this as a lovable feature, but to implicate ourselves in the racial biases.

We can, like many critics, enjoy its form and style, shot with 16mm rather than the now common digital cameras, but we also need to think critically about why we find this story so appealing, narratively pleasing, and easy to digest.

That being said, this is a feature worth watching, several times over. Please join Trent Film Society on Wednesday, October 23 at 8pm at Market Hall. Big screen, big sound. Seating is first come, first serve. For more information, check out our facebook, or e-mail us at trentfilmsociety@gmail.com.