Winter’s Bone (2010) *****/*****

One of the opening images of Winter’s Bone is that of a little boy trying to play with a skateboard on a patch of dirt.  Set in backwater Ozark country, Winter’s Bone is a film about struggle and adversity more than anything else.  That image of the boy, jumping on his board and not getting more than a couple of feet in the gravely dirt is a pretty appropriate metaphor for the lives of the people in this part of the country.  There isn’t any pavement around for him to ride on.  The land on which he lives in neglected, unkempt.  The resources he might need to succeed at as simple a task as riding a skateboard just aren’t there.  And even further, he’s probably not aware that any such resources might exist anywhere.  The characters of Winter’s Bone are the type of people who have never known anything but making due.  They know nothing of potential, nothing of hope.  There is a small sense of happy ignorance to be found in the children here, but the adults; they’re a different story entirely.  The adults are just educated enough, just traveled enough, to know the desperation of their situation.  These are hardened people weathered by handicap and failure.  This is director Debra Granik’s second feature film.  It is such an effective, well-crafted portrayal of the horror of rural poverty that I immediately sought out her first film Down to the Bone and added it to my Netflix queue.  The talent here is palpable, and I can’t wait to see what else she has to offer.

 

The main character of this film is a teenage girl named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) who has grown up her whole life in this hopeless environment.  As a result she is hardened and capable beyond her years.  She has the kind of strength that comes only from constant struggle.  The boy with the skateboard is her little brother, one of two younger siblings that she takes care of due to her mother’s near comatose status and her father’s absentee, ne’er do well lifestyle.  Their means are meager, they dwell in a small house, eat what can be hunted or scrounged from neighbors; but they make due.  Until they get a visit from the local sheriff.  It seems that their meth-cooking father Jessup has an upcoming court date and has predictably gone missing.  The problem for Ree, as the sheriff explains, is that Jessup has put up their house and land as his bond, and if he doesn’t make it to court it all goes forfeit.  That small house, that patch of land, it’s all that’s keeping Ree and her family alive, and though the sheriff warns that going looking for her father is a dangerous proposition due to the company that he keeps, the girl has no choice but to dedicate herself to just that task.   

From this point forward every moment of the film is dripping with dread.  There is the promise of danger around every corner.  Every character we meet, be it friend, neighbor, or family, is a potential enemy.  In this desperate landscape it’s dog eat dog, and no one is beneath a preemptive murderous rampage if they feel like someone is going to stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.  The story initially seems to be following the structure of a classic noir detective tale.  Ree follows a path of shakedowns toward her goal, meets the seedy underbelly of her community, and takes some lumps along the way.  But as the film goes on it begins to resemble less a detective tale and more something more basic and primordial.  There isn’t a trail of clues that leads to the light at the end of the tunnel.  Ree doesn’t get any leads, she doesn’t do much of any deducing.  She simply wanders, deeper and deeper into a meth fueled criminal underworld.  Ree’s story is less Raymond Chandler and more Beowulf or The Odyssey.  This story harkens back to the earliest bits of storytelling in human history, the stuff that makes up fiction’s very DNA.  Ree is on an epic journey.  She encounters different monsters along the way, but unlike Odysseus she isn’t trying to get back to her home, she’s trying to save it.  Her chances at success get so bleak, her investigation so dangerous and ineffectual, that the story eventually surpasses simple noir and starts to dip it’s toes into horror.  There have been a good handful of modern horror films that have tried to milk a rural setting for it’s chills and thrills.  Films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, The Hills Have Eyes, or The Devil’s Rejects have plumbed the depths of rural depravity with lots of blood and guts thrown in to get a reaction out of their audiences, but there isn’t a single one of them that is able to come close to the amount of on screen horror that Winter’s Bone is able to generate by doing far, far less.  By using classic filmmaking tricks, establishing tension, building toward its violence, and developing a strong sense of mood, Winter’s Bone gets so foreboding that it’s scarier than any horror film I’ve ever seen without ever actually becoming a gore fest or inserting things like jump scares.  If Debra Granik ever directed a proper horror film and focused all of her energy on scaring the wits out of her audience, I can’t even imagine what the results would be.  There might be legitimate heart attacks in the theater.  

The actual nuts and bolts of the story consists of little more than vagaries.  We don’t ever really know what we’re supposed to be dreading so much.  We don’t know why these people that Ree are questioning are so dangerous.  We know that what’s going on involves the drug trade, but any specifics beyond the cooking of meth are never given to us.  We also don’t know how Ree grew up to be as strong and good as she is without any sort of positive influences or role models in her life.  These are details that other movies would get bogged down in.  Winter’s Bone is a very specific story about a girl and what she’s experiencing now.  We get things from her perspective and her perspective alone.  Anything else really isn’t important, so it isn’t addressed.  Details are left just off screen, perhaps for us to ponder and fill in with our own imaginations, but never to get too caught up in.  This approach gives Winter’s Bone an amazing focus and economy of storytelling.  This is a film that knows what it is, what it wants to accomplish, and it doesn’t sabotage itself by trying too much and falling short.  It’s an amazing example of shrewd, concise screenwriting and editing.  The material is chopped down to the bare essentials, the essence of the story, and the film is consequently made stronger.

This approach of avoiding the concrete details of the story could have easily backfired.  The sense of danger in the film builds and builds throughout.  Every person that Ree meets is painted as being more dangerous than the last.  With the way the film constantly ups the stakes, but never tells us what those stakes exactly are, it could have been setting itself up for real failure.  If the climax of the film, if that scene where Ree finally found her father and was exposed to the heart of what he was into didn’t deliver, if the stakes didn’t turn out to be grave at all, the entire film could have felt like a real letdown.  If the climax didn’t wow us, Winter’s Bone would have felt like much ado about nothing; a real loud mouthed braggart of a movie.  Fortunately, when we get to the climax of the film, when Ree enters the deepest depths of the world that her father lived in, the results are anything but disappointing.  As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say that the climax of this film is the most effective horror sequence that I’ve ever seen on film.  It’s horrific, visceral, and deeply affecting.  Every moment of Ree’s experience is milked to make sure that you are right in the moment with her, that you’re experiencing everything that she is.  The camera doesn’t turn away, the editor doesn’t jump cut to the aftermath; you have to experience every grizzly detail.  The ending makes the film.  Without it you would have an interesting to watch, but ultimately dissatisfying, incomplete story.  With this payoff, you walk out feeling as if you’ve seen a real masterpiece.

Without Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone would have been a fine enough film, I’m sure.  With her it becomes something important.  Her performance isn’t merely revelatory, it’s iconic.  Where did this girl come from?  Ree is experienced beyond her years, you can see it in her face, see it in her eyes.  The maturity of Lawrence’s performance is astounding.  At a moments notice she goes from worn out doormat, to matriarchal caretaker, to flat out fierce she-warrior.  Then, once or twice in the film, Ree is put in a situation that is beyond her ability to control, and all of that steely resolve washes away, like the sun breaking through a patch of clouds, to reveal the little girl that still lives under all of that armor.  There is a lot of beyond her years competence that this character exhibits, and it’s believable solely due to this amazing performance.  Everything she is asked to convey, every emotion that she needs to exhibit, Lawrence is able to get across clearly and beautifully.  This is the performance of the year by far, and I would be shocked if she didn’t get a truckload of recognition come awards season.

Lawrence’s anchoring performance is supported by a myriad of believable character work throughout the film, but there are two particular supporting roles that stood out to me as also being something special.  The first is Dale Dickey as Merab, woman to the local kingpin.  I can’t imagine that there is an actress working in Hollywood that looks more authentically like a redneck mountain woman than Dickey.  She has a face that seems to be composed entirely of frown lines, a build that more closely resembles jerky than woman.  She looks the part; she feels the part.  If I hadn’t recognized her from playing character roles in things before I wouldn’t have been sure if she was a professional actress or just a local.  And though she’s got a bit of a history playing the country gal throughout her career, I doubt that she’s had the opportunity to give a real, meaty performance like she does in this film before.  She lends weight and authority to the role.  She’s mean as a snake and does some pretty despicable things to our protagonist, but she always feels more like a real woman than she does a villain.  Merab isn’t a character that is unfeeling, she’s just doing what she knows needs to be done.  What she does she does for a reason, you can see regret in her eyes, but she nonetheless dishes out pain and violence with steely resolve.  And it’s that humanity in her eyes that makes her all the more horrifying.  This isn’t an evil monster.  This is a real woman who does horrible things.  She’s really out there somewhere in the world.  It’s an ugly place where we live and Merab is out there somewhere doing what she needs to do to hold onto her little piece of it.

The second supporting performance that really stuck with me was John Hawkes as Ree’s uncle Teardrop.  He is probably the most unlikely anti-hero I’ve ever seen.  He’s introduced to us as a drug addict, an abuser of women, and just flat out a real weasely old bully.  To look at Teardrop, you wouldn’t think much of his status, stature, or authority.  But over the course of the film Hawkes is able, through a natural presence and charisma, to make you believe that Teardrop is a force to be reckoned with. There is so little to like about him (he’s a real piece of crap), but he is developed so well, his motivations are laid out so clear, that you can’t help but root for him eventually.  Once you reach the point in the story where he actually does something good you want to explode in cheer.  And Teardrop isn’t a character that does good out of any sense of altruism.  He might do it out of pride, he might do it out of ego, he might do it out of bull-headed stubbornness, but you can be sure that if he does something to help you out it’s not just out of the goodness of his heart.  He leaks desperation, he oozes insecurity, he gives off the stink of despair; and somehow he channels all of this to make himself a very dangerous man.  Give me a Teardrop comic book.  Give me a Teardrop action figure.  I could watch the continued adventures of him battling crazy meth heads and local law enforcement officials for quite a while before I got bored with it.  Just give him some dynamite arrows and dirt hills to ramp off of like the Dukes of Hazzard and you’ve got a damn fine adventure series on your hands.

This entire film is plush with depressing, hillbilly scenery.  With such a simplistic story, Winter’s Bone has to rely on its performances, its mood, and its atmosphere to fully engage the viewer and keep them drawn into the world of the Ozarks.  The landscaped looks like bombed out apocalyptia.  The people who live here look like human driftwood.  There is nothing in the world of Winter’s Bone that hasn’t been worn down by time, poverty, and the elements.  Spending time with these people, in this place, starts to feel Gummo level disturbing and gross.  Yards are all dirt, overgrown weeds, and rusted out metal.  The costume design is an amazing patchwork of authentic, hand me down relics.  There is nothing aggrandized to be cinematic, every aspect of the film is lived in and authentic.  This is how poor people really dress; this is how they really live.  The characters here navigate the sparse scenery without giving it any particular notice or mind.  This is their ugly world, and the presence of humanity makes it all the more horrible to take in.  Small, decorative items show up here and there.  A birdbath, an antique trinket, and rather than sprucing things up, they actually make them all the more depressing.  They are reminders that people live here, humans, not just monsters.  There’s a crass old saying that you can’t polish a turd.  Well here you see that people have tried, and the results are disheartening to say the least.   All of this despair is captured with handheld cameras shot on film stock that more closely resembles video than anything Hollywood puts out.  The result is a documentary, authentic feel that adds to the impact of the setting, production design, and costuming.  This world really exists, you’re really here, Winter’s Bone has you trapped.  The handheld can get a bit shaky and in the moment, but it’s always tempered with sensible, restrained editing so that the film doesn’t visually devolve into the fast, sloppy, post-MTV nonsense that a lot of mainstream films have turned into.  Instead of just getting dizzy, you are placed in the middle of the onscreen action, the mood envelops you, and watching Ree’s journey unfold becomes a real sensory experience.   

While Winter’s Bone seems to have been generally well received by critics, I have heard rumblings that it goes too far in its depiction of the Ozarks.  There is a school of thought out there that the world of this film is a hyper-real, too gross, too dilapidated version of the one that really exists, and the end product becomes exploitive and disingenuous.  I really don’t think so.  There is a squirrel hunting sequence in the film that was particularly horrifying to my urban sensibilities.  Ree teaches her very young siblings to shoot the little buggers out of the trees, skin them, and gut them.  The whole thing is shown to us in grizzly detail.  I could see how it might come off as a shock tactic, a gross out scene meant to get an artificial rise out of the audience.  If I didn’t know better, I might think that nobody really did things like this.  But I do know better.  I have relatives who have done exactly this in locations less remote than the Ozarks just a generation ago.  I’ve been on road trips, seen places, and met people that lead me to believe that such things still go on today.  That Winter’s Bone shows an ugly part of America doesn’t necessary mean that it’s exploiting it.  There are some old timey, religious songs that play over the film’s soundtrack throughout.  They really added to that sense of lost humanity in a virtual wasteland that I spoke of earlier.  These rural people are largely very religious.  They may have little, but they have their faith.  And why?  What do the characters in this film have to be thankful for?  Anyone who can live here and have any sort of love of their maker starts to make faith look like ignorance.  But probably it’s a necessary ignorance, as any sort of real understanding of their situation would immediately lead to defeat.  And the characters in this film don’t give in to defeat.  They make due; they push forward.  They do anything they have to in order to keep on surviving whether it be, criminal, cruel, or simple self-denial.  To me, that portrayal isn’t exploitive; it’s honest.  And as far as I’m concerned, to think that there isn’t a world out there that looks like this, that there aren’t people out there that are living in these sorts of conditions, that’s a form of ignorance in itself.  Sure, the horror elements, the constant danger, and the noiry plot are the stuff of Hollywood.  But the rest of it, the people, the places, they portray and comment on some very bleak, very real world situations.  It makes Winter’s Bone not just a well-made film, but also an experience that will stick with you and remain in your thoughts for a good while after you walk out of the theater.