Winter's Bone (2010)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, 
John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, 

Directed by: Debra Granik

Written by: Debra Granik, 
Anne Rosellini

Duration: 1hr 40mins

Rating: 4 out of 5

Children bounce on a squeaky trampoline.  A dog runs wild amongst rusty farm machinery. A teenage girl hangs laundry on a packed line, squinting against the cold wind and keeping a wary eye on the kids.  Her pretty but hardened features peer out attentively from layers of coat and hood, her blonde locks blowing in the breeze.

CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT THEY PUT ON THE TOURISM PAMPHLETS

This is a bleak place: sparse, run-down, poor; nothing grows here. Dead leaves crack under foot, neighbouring properties are separated by barbed wire, not white picket.  It’s also a female place: the men are nowhere to be seen, especially in this household, where seventeen-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) has been left in charge of her little brother and sister by her mother’s debilitating depression and her father’s on-going absence.  Her dignity and resilience are plain to see – “Don’t ask for what should be offered,” she chastises her siblings, after turning down a charitable advance.  

LAWRENCE: BY FAR THE NICEST SCENERY ON SHOW

When we finally meet a male, more than five minutes in, he brings trouble.  A police car is not a welcome presence in these parts and, sure enough, Garret Dillahunt’s sheriff bears bad news.  Ree’s father has been arrested for cooking crystal meth and has put the family home up as bail.  If he fails to turn up for his trial in a week’s time (a close to forgone conclusion), the state gets the house.  So begins Ree’s journey into finding her drug-peddling pops, turning over a succession of rocks to find increasingly unpleasant creatures underneath who  consistently deliver one  clear message: “You need to turn around, and get yourself home.”

NOT EXACTLY A WELCOMING BUNCH

Debra Granik’s adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel takes place in America’s desolate Ozark mountain country, and the setting is a character in its own right.  Winter’s Bone is at its core a horror movie, a social realism slasher flick; the enemy here isn’t some bogeyman, but the community itself.  Ree encounters drug addicts, wife-beaters, social miscreants and the sinister gang who rule the area more than anyone with a badge, and a sense of dread builds as she heads towards a dénouement that even offers its own gruesome ‘eeugh!’ moment.  The rural backdrop brings to mind the backwoods killers sub-genre – and indeed, Dillahunt was murderous Krug in the (surprisingly solid) Last House on the Left remake.

YOU CAN ALWAYS DEPEND ON THE KINDNESS OF FAMILY...

Far from adding a distracting Hollywood sheen to a supposedly down-to-Earth tale, Lawrence’s wholesome good looks are actually an asset to the role.  This is a girl who, in another life, could have been homecoming queen, head cheerleader, all that apple pie stuff.  (This concept is portrayed most vividly by the casting of Sheryl Lee in a cameo – Lee, of course, played the ultimate all-American girl gone wrong archetype in Twin Peaks.)  Ree has been molded into something much tougher and more resourceful by the very monster that she now fights against: her environment.  She is a scream queen who goes about her business quietly, a pin-up concealed under a duffel jacket; Ripley without the aliens, Laurie Strode with no Michael Myers.  To describe her as a feminist icon would not be an overstatement.  Winter’s Bone was 2010’s big indie hit and Lawrence, in an Oscar-nominated performance, its breakout star.  With next year’s The Hunger Games threatening to be the new Twilight, Lawrence may soon be a huge star – and on this evidence, she would deserve it.

“YOU WAS WARNED...  YOU WAS WARNED  BUT YOU 

WOULDN'T LISTEN.  WHY WOULDN'T YOU LISTEN?"

Also worth mentioning is the movie’s sole helpful male, John Hawkes’ uncle Teardrop (and even he is rarely without his nose in a mound of cocaine, or merrily offering his stash to a repulsed Ree), who ends up guiding his young niece into the underworld and even rescuing her at one point.  It took me a while to work out where I knew Hawkes from, then I clocked that he played scrawny Pete Bottoms, Liquor Store Clerk, in From Dusk Till Dawn (“I never said ‘Help us!’”).  Also recognised by the Academy, Hawkes delivers a grubbily nuanced performance that channels a young Harry Dean Stanton, ensuring that Winter’s Bone is more than just a one-woman show. Recommended.  ****