Big Screen Peter: Winter’s Bone

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie. Enjoy.

review by Peter Lewis

Every so often a film will come along that perfectly captures a place and the people who inhabit it. “Winter’s Bone,” a film directed by Debra Granik, is one such film.

Set in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri, it is a complete cinematic realization: the performances memorable, the cinematography starkly beautiful, and the script tight as a drum. Which, as a Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance, perhaps should be expected.

The film is an adaptation of a novel by Missourian Daniel Woodrell. The story revolves around Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17-year-old tasked with taking care of her two younger siblings — aged 6 and 12 — as well as her mentally ill mother. As the movie unfolds, this already precarious situation is compacted by the disappearance of Ree’s father, Jessup. A renowned meth cooker, Jessup is due in court and out on bail with the family house and acreage up as collateral. This news sends Ree on a sojourn through the surrounding hills in search of her father — her precarious hold on the childrearing and household duties seemingly slipping away with each passing day.

In her role as the lead, Jennifer Lawrence is a revelation. She’s reminiscent of a young Renée Zellweger, inhabiting her character of Ree Dolly with a truly rugged grace. And despite the best efforts of the wardrobe crew, her beauty is quite evident even with the rough and ragged appearance. But Lawrence’s excellence was far from alone. John Hawkes, looking roughly worn and at times cranked out, plays Jessup’s brother Teardrop like he’s lived the life of a man used to straddling the line between lawful and unlawful — proving once again that he is a sorely underrated acting commodity.

Ree has no illusions about her father. And knows she has no real control over the things that led to her predicament. Yet, she feels directly responsible for the rest of her family and because of this, her search efforts put her directly in harm’s way. Undaunted by a variety methods of persuasion, she continues, not out of stupidity, but because she knows the stakes and what homelessness will do to her family. As a result, Winter’s Bone seems, in some ways, to function as a rather horrifying tale of female empowerment. With measured realities, it offers a truly sobering counterpoint to the glossy fantasy world seen in films like Juno or Knocked Up.

Winter’s Bone paints a story of clannish, taciturn behavior, where loyalty to those around matters most. Loose talk and the law are the only things that can get a man in real trouble, real fast. Fortunately, it never resorts to empty moralizing. Nor does it try to paint the situations of the impoverished land as a societal flaw to be fixed. Instead, it sets forth the tale and lets it stand on its own sturdy legs without reservations. It is stark and beautifully grotesque, just like the world around us.

Winter’s Bone has been out in a limited number of theaters — mostly larger cities — for quite some time now. Up until this past weekend, however, it had yet to make its way to the River Valley. Though it is no fault of the film itself, I don’t expect it to last long in the theater here. Sundance awards or not, it’s just the unfortunate economic truth for smaller independent films. So, if you would like to see the film, do it sooner rather than later.

• Winter’s Bone is playing at the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith. Link here for time and ticket info.

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