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MOVIE REVIEW
Winter's Bone
When A Cold, Mysterious Chill Runs Through The
Midwestern Air
Jennifer Lawrence as Ree in Debra Granik's drama "Winter's
Bone", now making its way around the country in movie theaters.
Roadside Attractions
by
Josh Youngerman/PopcornReel.com
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Friday, July 9, 2010
"Winter's Bone"
is the best American picture I have seen this year.
Debra Granik's film, set in the Ozarks in Missouri, follows in the great
tradition of film noir. Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is basically a
jagged detective, determined to uncover the truth about what happened to her
dad. At the center of the film
though are the performances from Lawrence and John Hawkes.
The plot revolves around Ree Dolly (Lawrence), a 17-year-old girl living in the
Ozarks who has become a mother figure to her brother Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and
her sister Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson).
Her mother is seen but never heard.
We are left to assume that there’s a drug-related problem afoot.
Ree’s dad Jessup is a crystal meth
dealer/addict who put the family’s house up for his bail.
However, with his trial date looming, he’s nowhere to be found.
That becomes a huge problem when Sheriff Baskin (Garret Dillahunt) shows up at
the house and tells Ree that she needs to find him otherwise her family will
lose their house. (Roger Ebert astutely pointed out in his review that the
setting in Winter’s Bone is very reminiscent to that of Cormac McCarthy’s book
The Road, and I wholeheartedly agree with his observation.)
This land is almost as bare and as desolate as the bleak future in
McCarthy’s novel and the 2009 film adapted from it.
Like most film noir, the story follows Ree going from person to person, trying
to piece together most of the clues. She is very scrappy and never loses
her cool, even when faced with some of the most terrifying situations. Ree
is often physically beaten yet is always left standing.
The dialogue is rapid fire, some of it drawing from the language found in
noir. Viewers may have a hard time
keeping up with some of it.
There are so
many instances where Granik could have sunken to cliché and given us a hackneyed
and misery-filled diatribe about the Ozarks. An example of this occurred
in Courtney Hunt’s "Frozen River",
a fine film in its own right, which spends nearly an hour leading us through the
miserable life of the lead woman (played by Melissa Leo).
Not only did some of it feel false, much of it was irrelevant to
furthering the story. It was almost
as if Hunt didn’t trust us to figure this out. There,
each scene and every piece of dialogue advanced the plot.
"Winter’s Bone" benefits from being shot on location in Branson, Missouri, and
to Granik's credit a lot of the supporting players are local townsfolk.
They all do fine jobs here, and it is hard to tell which ones are locals
and which are actors. Lauren
Sweetser, an actress from Springfield, Missouri who graduated from Missouri
State this year, plays Ree’s best friend Gail.
She has moved out to Hollywood and is apparently in talks to appear in a
Steven Spielberg production. Keep
an eye out for her. Garret Dillahunt always seems to find a way to make
minor characters really interesting and he does that again here in the role of
the Sherriff. Remember his small
but memorable roles from "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road"?
Dale Dickey is terrifying in the role of Merab, a local who makes quite
the impression.
I mentioned the
central performances at the start and it would be silly for me not to talk about
them. Jennifer Lawrence ("The Burning Plain") gives a star-making
performance as Ree, one that will likely garner some Oscar attention. It
is strong work, and talking further about it would only diminish it. John
Hawkes is almost unrecognizable in the role of Teardrop.
He’s every bit as good as Lawrence.
He completely loses himself in the role of a hateful yet fiercely loyal
man who is a product of his environment. These are two of the great
performances of the year.
Granik's film is noir down to its bone. It actually reminded me of the high
school noir "Brick", with its
use of the heightened language and how faithful it is to these conventions.
Like "Brick",
"Winter's Bone" is a film you
might have to see two or three times just to unravel what is going on. I know I
am looking forward to seeing it again.
"Winter's Bone" is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for some drug material, language and violent content.
The film's running time is one hour and 40 minutes.
Josh Youngerman is Chicago's Horror Movie Examiner. He will be
contributing film reviews to The Popcorn Reel. He is on Twitter
@Josh_Y.
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