On the one hand, Sundance and Cannes award-winner "Beasts of the Southern Wild" has been correctly labeled as "magic realism." It's the story of a stubborn 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) living with her short-tempered dad, Wink (Dwight Henry), in a waterlogged bayou somewhere in the Mississippi Delta. Told from Hushpuppy's point of view, the film grooves to her mingling of fantasy and reality, with dreams of giant prehistoric critters coming back to life (out of the world's melting glaciers) intertwined with the nitty-gritty of existence in this hunter-gatherer squat situated entirely off the grid.
And yet, as the film meanders on, we learn that this is not some postapocalyptic world like in "Cloud Atlas," but quite close to the here and now, with clean, regulated modern life continuing on the other side of the flood wall. It's here that the allegory to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans comes into focus. Those with the money and means live on dry land, the destitute left to fend for themselves amid rising waters.
The Katrina damage left unmended was largely due to government inaction — stemming from the Bush regime's conviction that government cannot be the answer — but the film muddies the issue. Civilization wants the people of Bathtub back: Federal teams go out rounding up the stragglers, offering them medical care and warm meals, albeit in the sterile conditions of an evacuee camp.