Cinema Verdict Review: Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone

OPENING: 07/11/2010

STUDIO: Anonymous Content

RUN TIME: 100 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Bred and buttered.

Opening Statement
Winter’s Bone is a chilling tale set in rural Missouri which couldn’t have been cast any better. Jennifer Lawrence brilliantly leads the ensemble as a seventeen year old looking for her miscreant father in a small community of people, many of which are blood related. With a budget of only $2 million dollars, director Debra Granik has assembled a film more powerful than anything I have seen this year.

Facts of the Case
Seventeen year old Ree Dolly cares for her little brother, sister and emotionally ill mother in their rural Missouri home. The sheriff comes by the house looking for the father, who is due in court within days, but has since disappeared from town. A bail bondsman comes by the house to let the family know that their deadbeat dad has put the house up as part of the bond and if he doesn’t show in court, they will be soon become homeless. Ree begins her search for her father in the obvious places, but soon realizes that to get the information she needs, she will need to talk to the shady people with whom he has had dealings. In this part of the Ozarks, almost everyone is related, but few are willing to help.

The Evidence
It is strange how the films that I look forward to the most often disappoint, like when Indiana Jones was running from the spaceship or when Batman had a case of laryngitis that wouldn’t go away. In both of these instances, I knew something was terribly wrong. In recent years, the films that leave the most lasting impressions are the ones out of left field. In 2007, it was No Country For Old Men and in 2008, it was Let The Right One In. In 2009, that film was Drag Me To Hell, and this year the film that has blown me away is Winter’s Bone. After a string of mediocre films, I am once again reminded of why I love going to the movies.

I know different types of films appeal to different types of people, but I seem to have an affinity for either cold, depressing dramas or psychological horror films. Winter’s Bone falls into the former category, but has several scenes that will get under your skin without question. In the same way as John Boorman’s Deliverance, we meet the type of mountain people that those who read online film reviews should never meet in a dark alley—or anywhere for that matter. Ree’s family is poor, squirrel-eatin’ poor to be exact, but Ree does her best to bring up her little brother and sister responsibly. She teaches them to cook for themselves and quizzes them on various math and spelling words. Ree has to fend for herself since her mother is depressed and hasn’t said a word in years. While Ree and her siblings are kind-hearted individuals, her kinfolk are indeed a scary bunch, the kind of people who keep several tireless cars on the lawn and a pet ferret in the corner of the living room. (No offense to our lesser distinguished readers of Cinema Verdict who might own a ferret or two. I hear those footlong rats taste wonderful.)

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree, the teenager searching for her missing father who is also one of the many local manufacturers of crystal meth. To keep the house, Ree must track down her father and make sure he gets back to court in time. She starts by talking to her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes), the first of many men with whom direct eye contact is not recommended. When we first meet Teardrop, he is nonchalantly loading his pistol at the kitchen table we can sense instantly that this is a tightly wound individual. Teardrop sports a small tattooed cross under his left eye and repeatedly pulls a bag of cocaine from his pocket for a quickie. John Hawkes is just one of the outstanding performers in the film, and Teardrop is the kind of guy who can become completely unhinged at any moment. Ree knows that too, probably from past experience, and Lawrence exhibits that fear to a T.

Aside from a “doobie for your walk home”, Ree gets little to no help from Teardrop. She then seeks help from Little Arthur, another crank dealer in the area. With no support from him, she moves on to Thump Milton, a distant relative who runs the town and won’t speak a word about the information he clearly knows. All of the people she deals with along the way feel unbelievably real, and moreso, look like true hill folk. Everyone in the film is dirty and has a dishevelled look about them. Merab, daughter of Thump, is played by Dale Dickey and looks every bit the part of a mountain woman who has felt the effects of a very hard life, possibly one with frequent meth use. Dickey is frightening and a pivotal scene involving Merab near the end of the film is bone chilling.

Winter’s Bone is a film about blood ties and how much those really mean. Will feuding families of the same bloodline willingly watch a seventeen year old and family lose the house because of the iniquities of her father? In the end, it is a question of which people are truly heartless and at what cost. Debra Granik has done a masterful job at exploring this subject in a rural part of Missouri most of us will thankfully never see. Granik’s effective use of gray and blue tones perfectly bring out the nature of both the bleak, winter setting, but also the coldness of the story’s characters. This is a film that you won’t forget for some time and although it won’t have the mass appeal of Inception, it has far more complex characters and believable situations…if you are into that sort of thing.

Closing Statement
Winter’s Bone is an unforgettable film and ranks up with Deliverance in the creepy-hillbilly genre. The gritty acting combined with great dialogue make for one of the most realistic dramas I have seen in years. We see characters in various levels of depravity and get a view of an inpoverished world completely foreign to most of us.

The Verdict
10/10

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