Plot: Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) has a major problem. Her degenerate father Jessup is once again in trouble with the law for cooking meth and has put up the family's house and land for bond. When Jessup fails to show up for the court date and is presumed dead, Ree receives the news that she, her younger brother and sister, and her mentally troubled mother will be evicted within the week. Ree has only one shot--track down her father alive or dead. However, in the poverty stricken Ozarks where trust is hard to come by, Ree will have to confront angry and belligerent neighbors who have no qualms about killing and her meth addicted Uncle Teardrop Dolly (John Hawkes), if she wants to save her family.
Review: Director Debra Granik's Winter's Bone is stark portrayal of poverty in the Ozarks that while fascinating, occasionally suffers from deliberate pacing. I was continuously shocked by how bleak and dark the world of Winter's Bone is. Poverty as a whole isn't something we like to talk about in the United States, maybe because we are reminded that we are the "greatest country in the world" on a daily basis. But in Winter's Bone you can't escape it. It is in your face. It's in the ramshackle home that Ree and her family lives in, the absentee fathers among her neighbors, the pervasive drug use and violence especially towards women. Granik's message about the poverty is as about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head.
Poverty in the end becomes a character in its own right in Winter's Bone. This is due in large part to the excellent cinematography of Michael McDonough. His brilliant camerawork captures the stark landscapes of poverty not just in the Ozarks itself but in the people that dwell in those poverty stricken lands. A haunting score by Dickon Hinchliffe lends a sadness and quiet dignity to the film as well.
However, Winter's Bone might have been a boring and unwatchable film, if not for the powerhouse performances of Hawkes and Lawrence, for which both received Academy Award nominations. Hawkes' Teardrop Dolly is a mixed bag. On one hand he is a violent meth addict who isn't averse to slapping people around and holds to the code of silence that the Ozarks employs. He wishes Ree would just leave his brother well enough alone. Yet as the film progresses the audience also sees a fiercely loyal and protective man that abhors anyone trying to order him around. The scene where Teardrop refuses to get out of his car after being pulled over by a police officer is the definition of tense.
As good as Hawkes was, Jennifer Lawrence was better as the 17 year old Ree Dolly. Spirited and determined, there is a dignity about Ree that persists even in the face of such challenging social circumstances. Family is everything to Ree, whether it means showing her younger siblings how to skin a squirrel for food, shoot a gun, or brush her mentally ill mother's hair. Yet beneath this exterior toughness is a vulnerable 17 year old girl who wants to escape and join the Army and a daughter who bears the responsibility of raising two siblings on her own. The scene where Ree implores her unresponsive mother for guidance just breaks your heart.
In the end Winter's Bone proves to be a candid and exemplary look at poverty in America that definitely deserves all of its acclaim.
My rating: 9/10
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