Winter's Bone

One of the best things about Winter's Bone, a film by Debra Granik, is that it takes us to a place many of us don't know. In this instance it's the Missouri Ozarks, a place where the characters all have guns, many have pickups rusting in their front yards, and the local economy seems to be fueled by the manufacture of methamphetamines. This is the land dismissively called "fly-over country" by the sneering elitists, but it's a place full of great stories and is uniquely American.

Winter's Bone, co-written by Granik and Anne Rosselini from a novel by Daniel Woodrell, is a clear-eyed look at the poverty of the region. Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is raising her younger brother and sister and caring for her mother, who has been emotionally damaged. Her father is elsewhere, and as the film begins she finds out from the sheriff that he put up their house as collateral for a bail bond. If he doesn't show up to trial, the house is lost. Thus we have a simple plot but many layers of texture.

Lawrence begins her search, mostly on foot, a wool cap fitted snugly over her head. She starts with her uncle, a menacing figure played by John Hawkes. She moves on to more people, some of them also relatives, but none of them willing to talk. Clearly Lawrence's father caused some people problems. Though she is told to stop her search, she presses on, determined not to doom her siblings and mother to homelessness.

I come from people who lived in rural Kentucky and Ohio, so I got a sense of how authentic this film is. The people are taciturn and resilient, in many cases living off the land (Lawrence shows her siblings how to skin a squirrel). The women have years of experience etched in their faces, but defer to the men (one woman, Dale Dickey, asks Lawrence if she doesn't have a man to take care of this for her). The men are also hard-worn, given to scraggly facial hair and patriotic clothing, and are determined to keep their way of life a secret.

This film is beautiful to look at it, though in many ways it is an ugly beauty. The photography by Michael McDonough is at times breathtaking in the way it captures the stark scenery of the area, with the nearly dilapidated houses and austere woods. I don't believe there's a scene in which the sun is shining, and though I saw the film on a hot day I could feel the cold.

The acting is also terrific. Lawrence is the revelation. She resembles Renee Zellweger, but without her annoying mannerisms. The performance is without trickery and brutally honest, especially in a scene where she is roughed up by some women and suggests they either kill her or help her. Another great scene is one in which she discusses joining the Army with a recruiter. She stands a good shot at getting an Academy Award nomination, but Hawkes and Dickey shouldn't be forgotten, either. Both start the film as standard villains, but reveal shading over the course of the film that make the work even more meaningful.

My only caveat is that the film does have a perhaps overly hopeful ending, given what we've just seen. I suppose the scriptwriters didn't have the heart not to reward Lawrence's character after the hell she'd gone through, but it didn't ring one-hundred percent true. But that's a minor quibble--Winter's Bone is one of the best films of the year.