I don’t believe this film ever played in my area, and the first time I heard of it was when it popped up with several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence). So into my Netflix queue it went, and in Blu-Ray format it arrived, and...
Wow. Winter’s Bone is a tense story about a teenage girl pushed into danger by the acts of her father. Living in the backwoods of Missouri can be challenging enough, but for Ree (Lawrence) things go from hard to bad to worse. The eldest of three children, it’s fallen to her to be both mother and father. Mother because her actual mother has lost her mind, and father because he has simply disappeared.
This last is the drive behind the film’s plot. Ree’s dad was one of the best crystal meth cooks in the area. He was out of bail. To secure his bail, he put his property up as collateral. Now he’s vanished and if he doesn’t show for court he’ll forfeit bail. Which means Ree will lose the house, the property, and have nowhere to take care of mother and brother and sister.
Ree’s desperation to avoid this drives her to ask questions that maybe she shouldn’t, to go places where she’s not wanted, to risk her own life in order to save the lives of her siblings.
Winter’s Bone doesn’t revel in false leads or misleading tricks. Yet at the same time it’s unpredictable and engrossing. If you consider yourself a law-abiding citizen, Winter’s Bone is a small window into a world you might never understand. It is essentially a modern version of bootleggers versus revenuers, in this case meth producers versus the sheriff. Notions of good and bad don’t exist in this world. And while lip service is paid to blood, to family, it’s clear that the business takes priority over all. Antipathy underscores everything.
The film is rife with excellent and moving performances. Jennifer Lawrence should have taken the statuette that Natalie Portman didn’t deserve (because let’s face it, Black Swan was terrible and Portman’s performance was dreadful). Lawrence’s performance as Ree is a revelation and makes me excited to see how she’ll do as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. (In many ways, Winter’s Bone feels like a training camp for parts of The Hunger Games; it feels like District 12.)
As much as I enjoyed her performance, though, I was taken away by John Hawkes as Teardrop, her uncle. His personal journey is as arduous as hers, maybe more so because he has no illusions as to where it may lead. He reeks of a fatalistic air, accepting his fate without surrendering to it, and this lends him such power and presence. Very well done, indeed.
At any time the film could have gone in any direction, and any of them would have felt right. As such, Winter’s Bone mimics life to perfection. Great film, well worth the effort to see.
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