Winter’s Bone (2010) directed by Debra Granik

Synopsis:  (From the Winter’s Bone IMDB) An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.

My Thoughts:  Winter’s Bone is tough – but I don’t mean that in a bad way. It is unrelenting in its portrayal of the potential consequences of a perfect storm of poverty, isolation, violence, and drug addiction. There is a very distinctive culture that exists within certain portions of the Ozarks, where violent, reactionary behavior is not uncommon, and where poverty and addiction are the rule, rather than the exception to it. This is not to say that the Ozarks are a bad place – I’m sure they’re lovely, and that overall, the people are very kind.

However, like all rural areas, there are going to be pockets of xenophobia, racism, violence, and the like – that’s just sort of the way things work, unfortunately. If you’re not exposed to diversity of thought, you don’t usually just spontaneously develop it on your own. But I digress; that violent, addicted, poverty-stricken portion of this extremely rural area is what Winter’s Bone focuses on.

So, our “unflinching Ozark Mountain girl” is 17 year old Ree Dolly (played by Jennifer Lawrence). The crux of the story here is that Ree’s meth cooking father Jessup was arrested, and put the family’s home up as bond. Should he fail to appear for his court date, the home and lands will be forfeit. The home is the only thing the family has – Ree’s mother is disabled (although I don’t think it is ever covered what is going on with her, I do remember Ree saying something to the effect that she is sick, and that she always will be), and Ree can’t really go out and earn money, since someone needs to be home to take care of her two young siblings, and her mother is unable to provide that care herself.

So, in short, Ree really needs to find her father and make sure that he shows up, so she begins her search in earnest. Unfortunately, the residents have a really strong “don’t stick your nose in other peoples’ business” ethos which she is directly violating, and they do NOT take kindly to that.

I think that Jennifer Lawrence’s Ree, and her uncle Teardrop (played to perfection by John Hawkes) are the film’s greatest assets. Both give stellar performances. They are 100% believable as their respective characters. Winter’s Bone shines its absolute brightest is in the surprisingly nuanced and sensitive way its characters are portrayed. All of them, really. It would have been so easy for this story to have devolved into a sort of Breaking Bad meets Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel disaster, but instead, tropes are circumnavigated and everyone we meet comes across as real, albeit hard-living people – they can be nice, but they can also be cruel; they are loyal to a fault, but cross them and you’ll probably be met with incredible violence.

We come to understand that everyone here is just doing what they feel they need to in order to survive. It is a surprisingly moving portrayal of one determined young lady with far too much responsibility forced upon her trying to do her best by her family in a community where crime is so ingrained in their social makeup that trust is non-existent and questions are tantamount to betrayal.

Rating:

If you go for dramas at all, I would give this one a go at some point. I was surprised by how much I liked this one. It was pretty bleak, but in an almost meditative sort of way. Like, you don’t want to die at the end, but maybe you find yourself just a little more mindful of the struggles that others might be facing.