DVD REVIEW: Winter's Bone (2010)

A HEROIC TALE

The America you see in Debra Granik's Oscar-nominated Winter's Bone (based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell) is very different from anything likely to come out of Hollywood and hence far more compelling, pulsating and gut-wrenching all at the same time. It's set in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, in a community that perhaps doesn't even exist in the consciousness of mainstream society. Here are crystal meth addicts and people who cook the drug living in shabby run-down tenements with ugly old trucks, litter and waste lying around what would be their front yards, menace and hard lines defining their unkempt faces, and yes, a code unto themselves that the law can't get it's arms around.   

In such an atmosphere, a 17-year-old girl, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence in an Oscar-nominated, career-making performance of quiet doughtiness) must find her father Jessup dead or alive before the Sheriff's office attaches her house and the small tract of woods the family owns and which, the father has pledged as bond for his bail. If he doesn't show up for the hearing, Ree and her family comprising a spaced-out, non-communicative mother and two little siblings are going to be out on the streets in that harsh, unforgiving terrain with no money to get by from day to day.

Problem is, Ree doesn't even know where to start, and even though any one of her extended clan may know where to find the man or what happened to him -- or could have even been responsible for his disappearance -- all she meets with when she goes knocking from door to door, are sinister threats and a firm order to go back home and take care of her family. Only Ree isn't intimidated by these threats and plods on, because hell, there's nothing else left to do; besides, she's made of the same material as the rest of them and isn't about to be bullied by even the worst of them. Mind you, these are people you wouldn't want to be a part of even your worst nightmares!

Eventually Jessup's doped out brother Teardrop (John Hawkes), who seems just as useless as everyone else at first, decides to help her in her mission. But it isn't the solving of the mystery that's central to the narrative. In fact, the film leaves many key questions unanswered, and yet provides a deeply satisfying experience. For Granik's focus is on this young girl's grit -- her vulnerability that somehow surfaces on her prematurely hardened face and her studied toughness. Her attitude to life is simply that of getting through it one day at a time. 

In between going around the area scouting for clues, she teaches her kid siblings to shoot a rifle, takes them hunting squirrels for dinner, shows her reluctant brother how to skin the animal and pull out its guts, cooks for them and sends them to school. She also dreams of signing up in the US army because there's a cash incentive of $40,000 to be earned, somewhere in the future, that she badly needs. 

Granik shot the film on actual locations in a documentary style that makes every scene life-like. Then, she hired locals to play supporting roles to lend further authenticity. There isn't much dialogue in the film, and more often than not, it's people issuing threats to each other in sinister undertones. Nor much action -- even the worst kind of brutality is only suggested (although that itself is enough to make your skin crawl), and yet, Winter's Bone bears the qualities of a taut thriller. 

The only truly independent film at the Oscars this year, it may not take home the golden trophy, but it's sure to win hearts wherever it's seen.