Early into Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, tow-headed children play on a trampoline outside a ramshackle house somewhere in the meth-riddled Missouri Ozarks, their light-colored hair the only bright spots in a dun and steel-colored landscape. My heart sank.
The film came to the festival with impeccable credentials: a Sundance win and next big thing buzz for its star, Jennifer Lawrence. Its subject matter was suitably grim: to save her home from being seized by bail bondsmen, a determined teenage girl must find her wastrel felon father and make sure he makes his court appearance.
By now, depending on your temperament, you're either champing at the bit or running for the door. I almost ran, but I'm glad I stood my ground.
Here's what I feared: miserablist minimalism. Porn about The Poors. Well-intentioned wallowing. A Sundance special, in other words. Miraculously, such is not the case, thanks to genuinely gritty source material and Granik's gift for directing actors. Lawrence's performance as Ree is amazing, and it's surrounded by equally strong, scary ones, from indie pros like John Hawkes [as Ree's uncle Teardrop] as well as weathered MO locals with faces out of Walker Evans by way of the most wanted list at the local post office.
The biggest obstacle facing Ree is not her absent father, per se, it's the members of her extended family she asks for help, information, anything, who coldly and brutally school her in the codes of silence that shape their lives of poverty and petty [well, sometimes] criminality. The consequences of disobedience are punishments meted out as swiftly and violently as anything in Scorsese's closed societies [whether in East New York or among Wharton's upper-class families], but Ree's been hit before and losing the house looms as a fate much worse than anything her kith and kin can dish out.
While the suspense of will-she-or-won't-she find her daddy is well marshaled, two signal moments stick with me. The first finds Ree at a feed lot/livestock auction, her aim to confront a man who may know her father's fate but refuses to speak with her. The echoing, juddering clang and clamor of the auctioneer, the animals, and the metallic catwalks and enclosures is beautifully designed, making the audience yearn along with Ree for the ability simply to be heard above the din.
The second will sound like a simple thing: a slick of oil shimmering on the surface of water. Once you see it, you realize it offers no closure to us or to Ree, but it carries a toxic finality that'll find you leaving the theatre feeling poisoned and punched in the guts.
