Winter's Bone (Review)

Watching Winter’s Bone is like a trip into a foreign country. It tells a story of an America many of us know nothing of, and as such it is a vital film. Brilliantly reserved and perfectly acted, Winter’s Bone is the kind of movie that crawls into your head and doesn’t escape. Other stories have attempted to submerge us into a similar environment, but through a lens that reminds us it’s all a movie. Winter’s Bone is an act of total immersion.

At the film’s center is Jennifer Lawrence as Ree, a 17-year-old girl who is forced to care for her two younger siblings because her mother is ill and her father is nowhere to be found. The police come to her doorstep and alert her that her father put up the house as his bail bond. Since he has gone missing, she says that if he doesn’t show up for his court date the house will be taken. Ree begins to believe that her father has been killed, but she will need proof or else she’ll lose everything. During her investigation she winds up in the middle of the local drug trade.

That all sounds like it might be prone to gunfights and scenes of drug binges set to Rolling Stones music. Instead, the drug business is merely a backdrop. In her Ozark town there is a feeling that much is being hidden. Whenever she goes asking around she is met by aggression and silence. No one will talk to her, and she is threatened multiple times. It is clear other people know what has happened, but they will tell her nothing.

Writer/Director Debra Granik and the cast avoid the “giddy-up, cowboy” stereotypes that can sometimes populate films of this ilk. These are fully-realized characters, and while they may not be the brightest folk they have their own traditions and culture. These people probably don’t go to see movies, but they sit around and play some music together in the living room. However, these are violent people who will go to extreme measures to get what they want, and to make sure people like Ree don’t get in the way.

Above all, if Jennifer Lawrence isn’t nominated for an Oscar for her unflinching lead performance there is no justice in this world. When she reveals her age to be 17 one cannot help but be floored. Here is a girl who has had to grow through more growing up in her life than most people ever experience. She is the head of a household already, and it seems unlikely she will ever truly have her own life. Not that she minds. She may be impoverished, but her love for her family is unparalleled. Despite the multiple doors that are slammed in her face she refuses to give up and let anyone else win.

There is a dark, violent energy to Winter’s Bone, but that is not because the film has a bleak view of humanity. It’s just that the community depicted here lives by a different code, and it’s one that everyone is willing to accept, including Ree. At the end of the day she doesn’t care about what she goes through, but she needs to keep her house and land, even if she does some despicable things in the process. Winter’s Bone has a gritty verisimilitude to it that makes the Coen Brothers seem glossy, though they also make great films.

This is one of the best movies of the year, and you are likely to have not heard of it. I implore you to see it, because it is coming into awards season very much under the radar. To the Ozarks, there is only one way to do things: their way. This environment has been inhabited for years and years before the film begins, not constructed for the purpose of our entertainment. The viewer feels as if they are an unwelcome visitor in a strange land. Even amongst themselves, the characters seem to be hiding something, and Ree is willing to do whatever she needs to find the truth. Even if it means going headfirst into the muck.

Rating:  (out of 4)