We live in a society that encourages us to not really feel that much emotion and doesn’t really praise vulnerability as much as it should. I think being vulnerable is actually a very courageous thing, and to have a job that lets you just completely let go in this way and go to emotional parts of yourself that otherwise you don’t really get to see, I love.
Ellen Page is a tiny and cool person who has insightful things to say. Here is the rest of our interview.
Welcome to The Bathtub, a magical bayou in southern Louisiana that is the home of Hushpuppy and her daddy Wink.
Hushpuppy is six, a Pippi Longstocking in oversized galoshes, Dorothy with a waterlogged Chihuahua, a tiny Wild Thing who could have sprung from Maurice Sendak’s forehead fully formed like Athena. She is a heroine with a thousand faces who has to confront awful truths about growing up: an impending storm that’s threatening The Bathtub, her erratic daddy Wink’s mysterious problems, and imaginary beasts that are sniffing out her weakest spots as the glaciers crumble. Hushpuppy is not precious or particularly precocious; she is an imaginative child with a serious face who is figuring out the world around her.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is in another world that we’re fortunate to visit. It almost hurts to think about; so visceral that it is almost beyond rational thought. Similar to when a child tells you a story and anything can happen. A lost shirt talks in your mother’s voice. The heartbeats of animals are a secret language to puzzle over. Sometimes you don’t have words and can only shriek.
