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.  ****

The Beaver (2011)

Starring: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, 
Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence 

Directed by: Jodie Foster

Written by: Kyle Killen

Duration: 1hr 31mins

Rating: 4 out of 5

Wanna rent a movie tonight?  Great, what do you fancy?  Oh look, how about this offbeat comedy about depression?  No?  Wait, where you going…?

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE...?

The Beaver was at different times a star vehicle for both Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, and it’s easy to see how it would have been a different beast with either funnyman as the lead.  No doubt light-hearted schizophrenic hand puppet antics would have come to the forefront, and soul-crushing desperation would have featured fleetingly, if at all. 

Enter Mel Gibson.  Now the script – one of the hottest in Hollywood, featured on its infamous Black List of best unproduced screenplays – was fated to take on a fiction-meets-reality status not seen since Mr & Mrs Smith merrily surfed the wave of Brangelina hysteria in 2005.  But the furore surrounding Gibson’s 2010 meltdown (racism, domestic abuse, leaked abusive answer machine messages) didn’t do Jodie Foster’s film any good and it suffered from a delayed and ultimately limited release.  Which is a real shame, as it’s an interesting oddity that deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience.

MEL HAS A RUDE AWAKENING

The fall-from-grace parallels mean that The Beaver’s story of a man who goes to the brink and claws his way back can’t help but be laced with irony.  Though it was filmed back in 2009 before any of the furore, it’s impossible to watch the movie without seeing Mel Gibson the man and not Walter Black the character.  But it remains a tortured and committed performance, superb irrespective of the meta element, and it made me bemoan how Mel has spent most of the last decade on the other side of the camera.  The amalgamation of star and material brings to mind Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and if he could get an Oscar nomination for that then, in a just world, Mel’s turn here would have gained the same recognition and subsequent catharsis.  As it stands, People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 1985 still has a long way to crawl to get public acceptance back.  

A CAREER IN CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT SURELY BECKONS

Rooting through a dumpster at the end of another day of misery and despair, toy company head Walter finds a beaver hand puppet and blearily takes it with him to a motel, where he plans to finally end it all.  His suicide attempt fails, and as he lies prone on the floor, finally at rock bottom, he starts addressing himself through the puppet, a gruff and direct character named ‘the Beaver’, who tells him to get his act together (the fact that the Beaver talks with a thick Aussie accent adds another layer of meaning, since we could easily see this as Mel’s id coming through.  It would be interesting to know if this was a script decision, arose from Jodie Foster’s direction or was actually inspiration from Gibson himself).  From then on he will only communicate through his felt friend, and the psychological distance allows Walter to reclaim some self-respect, turn his ailing company around, and go some way to reconnecting with his wife (Foster) and sons (Anton Yelchin and Riley Thomas Stewart). 

I applaud the film for its sensitive handling of mental illness.  This isn’t an Awakenings-style weepie, or the flat out farce that you would have expected from Messers Carrey or Carell.  The candid insight into the pain and loneliness of depression and the inherent funniness of the movie’s concept combine to create a measured, thoughtful tone.  Walter’s unconventional redemption gives the film a streak of gallows humour that means it never becomes grim or preachy: the failed suicide is played for dark laughs; Walter’s toy company makes its comeback by selling Beaver products; and the simple sight of man and puppet furiously arguing is hilariously absurd.

"YOU KNOW WHAT'S CRAZY? WALKING AROUND
EVERY DAY MISERABLE IS CRAZY... 
CRAZY IS PRETENDING TO BE HAPPY"

One blot is that nearly equal attention is devoted to Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence’s dull teenage subplot.  The running time is slight in the first place, and since his reappearance on screen turned out to be such an unexpected treat, we could have done with more Mel for our money. Nevertheless, The Beaver remains an original, funny, and ultimately quite moving experience.  ****