FILM CHALLENGE: 44) Winter's Bone

44) Winter's Bone

Director: Debra Granik

Year: 2010

Plot Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin's code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.

Winter's Bone is by far and away the best film I have seen so far in 2010 and despite the strong competition coming during the Oscar season - Somewhere, Tree Of Life, True Grit, etc. - I am certain it will remain one of my favourites right the way through the year.

This Sundance winner from director Debra Granik is a crime story reminiscent of the great Cormac McCarthy. In many ways, this is what the average adaptation of his award winning The Road should have looked like. After all, while Ree’s is a world filled with violent possibilities and her story is both harrowing and brutal, Winter's Bone is steeped in lyricism. The spoken language is simultaneously realistic and poetic and even amidst the horror there are moments of astonishing beauty and grace: Musicians enliven a cold night with banjos and guitars, a neighbour takes in Ree’s starving horse and her young siblings delightfully show off their spelling skills.

The similarities to The Road can not only be found in the film's atmosphere though, it's characters are just as involving and entrancing as the unnamed man and boy in the aforementioned novel. Ree is someone you side with right the way through to the end, praying that she is able to make her way through the ordeal alive because of her sheer determination and bravery in maintaining her family's safety. Moreover, this affection for the character also comes from the fact that there is a realism about Winter's Bone. It allows you to relate to it as you know that these kind of situations are happening in the world every day.

This startling sense of realism is enforced through the documentary style of photography, use of non-actors and how Debra Granik has been able to capture life in the wintry Missouri Ozarks with remarkable skill, never giving in to cliches of the way the community is portrayed. But, above all, what really punches you in the gut about Winter's Bone is the astonishing Jennifer Lawrence who delivers an Oscar-calibre performance here. When she turned up to introduce the film she was full of joy, happiness, bouncing off the walls and just like any ordinary American teenage girl. But as soon as the film started, it almost felt like we were watching an entirely different person because her performance is so unlike who she really is. But, despite this huge transformation, not a a single moment feels forced.

Granik, in the film's following Q&A, spoke of how the movie is unlikely to do well because many people don't like to accept that struggles like Ree's are happening universally. I respectfully disagree, I think this is one of those rare films, like last year's Precious, that hits you in such a powerful way that you can't help but look on and I - possibly naively - believe that it will be see some Oscar nods next year.

It will knock the breathe from your lungs.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 6 comments