Based on the book of the same name, Winter’s Bone is the story of a young girl’s search for her meth-peddling father after he’s jumped bail. With her family’s house and land on the line, Ree Dolly will stop at nothing to find him, including crossing her own relatives, distant or not.
Author Daniel Woodrell coined the term “country noir” to describe his own work, and if that’s any indication of the book, I’d say the film is a pretty faithful adaptation, at least tonally. It’s slow and methodical, tense to a fault and builds to an ending that, while unconventional, doesn’t feel the least bit contrived.
Directed and co-written by Debra Granik (only her second feature film), with cinematography Michael McDonough, the film makes excellent use of its Missouri location, with lingering shots that show the Ozarks as a sort of beautiful, dreary mess. The story, which gets a bit meandering in the middle, is as equally bleak and inspiring as the setting. The dialogue comes off as very native and natural, but at times it’s almost poetic. Sort of a Shakespeare-by-way-of-Ron-White.
But, really, the success of Winter’s Bone lies in the performances, and not just with it’s leads (Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes). Brief turns by Garret Dillahunt, Sheryl Lee, Kevin Breznahan and Dale Dickey added to a dozen or so “unknowns” (a few of them actually locals of Forsyth, MO) keep the film interesting and fresh, even when the plot seems to grind to a halt.
Playing Ree’s uncle, Teardrop, Hawkes is violently brilliant in every scene he shows up in. Which is odd because we only really ever see him lose his cool once, and that’s during his introduction. But, the act is so unpredictable, so quick, that every time he’s present there’s a ferocious threat in the air. There’s a quiet chaos about him, he’s an Alpha Dog in a room full of alpha dogs.
Lawrence nails the part of Ree, delivering a character that understands her surroundings and situation and accepts the dirty deeds committed by her family, but she knows this isn’t the life she wants to lead and it isn’t the world her younger siblings should be a part of. There’s a scene in the first fifteen minutes or so when, walking down the hall of her high school, Ree sees the ROTC marching past her. She follows them and watches as they march and perform their drills, smiling all the while. But, it’s not a smile of amusement, it’s one of longing, like someone who sees a pair of shoes or a suit in a department store window. The prospect of her joining the Army comes up several times throughout the film, and she says once that it’s because she needs the money, but you get the sense that it’s something more. To her, the Army represents structure, something her life is sorely lacking. It would make her part of something bigger than herself, but it’s also something that can survive without her. It’s a family that would welcome her, but never depend on her and would never turn their back on her for trying to do the right thing.
In the end Winter’s Bone is both unsettling and hopeful. It’s the story of people doing all the wrong things for misguided reasons and unearned allegiance. In a bleak garden populated with the dying weeds of mistrust and anguish, Ree is a flower of truth and beauty, struggling for every ounce of sunlight her world can offer.
