Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone is the thoroughly engaging story of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17-year-old girl forced to track down her meth-cooking father as he’s put their rundown house in the Ozark woods up for his bail bond and disappeared. If he doesn’t show up for his court date, the house is lost and Ree, her two younger siblings and invalid mother will be forced to live among the wolves. As simple as that description may seem, the cast of characters that make up this film turn it into something you’d never immediately suspect.
Ree’s primal instinct for survival and the protection of her family beats at this film’s core. As the story progresses your concern grows with every encounter Ree has with a crew of backwoods miscreants you’d just as much prefer never know exist and local law enforcement that could couldn’t care less.
Jennifer Lawrence as the determined young woman asked to grow up too soon is the stand-out here and has been recognized as such ever since Winter’s Bone premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, winning Best Picture and Screenplay. Last year Lawrence turned in an underrated performance by comparison in Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain, though here we find her in even more despair. Facing a group of people that would just as soon feed her to the hogs than help her find her father, Lawrence channels every emotion outside of happiness as Ree must scratch, scrape and splash her way through the unforgiving landscape where helpful words are hard to come by. “Talking just causes witnesses,” she’s told and it’s a line delivered as a threat just as much as it is an understood fact.
Only once do we see Ree breakdown, and it’s at the feet of her mother who couldn’t offer her help if she wanted to. Otherwise, though facing physical harm, she makes her way through meth dealing hillbillies and the authorities with steeled determination. She gains your respect and through that, your compassion.
Granik is also not to be forgotten as she directed and co-wrote the screenplay based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name. This isn’t easy material to deal with, but Granik’s treatment is intoxicating in its raw presentation. You never get the impression the curtains are closed as the lives of these down-and-out characters are fully on display. And just as she continues to remind us of the desperate situation Ree is in, she also gives us other moments specifically dedicated to Ree’s two siblings reminding us of what’s at stake, be it training them how to hunt squirrels or simply watching them innocently play amongst rolled bails of hay.
Where Winter’s Bone will likely lose audiences is with its slow build that some may find boring and the fact it never rises above its own bleakness. This isn’t a happy tale and to anyone that finds any measure of hope by the end isn’t looking this film squarely in the eyes. By the time the film comes to a close, the eyes are dead and looking off into the distance as to say, “What’s left?” Hope is spent and so are you.
I never saw Granik’s debut feature, Down to the Bone, in 2004, but I am immediately interested. So often we wonder just when will more female directors get the respect they deserve and now I have one more to add to my personal list. With Winter’s Bone it would seem we not only have a director to keep an eye on but an actress that has also gained the attention of many. Quite a feat for a small independent film I’ve already seen twice and would just as soon watch again.
