Movie Review: Winter's Bone

The life of a movie critic is filled with a lot of decently good movies, films that are worth ten bucks and two hours, but not much more. Sure, the explosions are fun, the kisses voyeuristic, the laughs distracting, and the tears cathartic, but if you miss whatever film, you don't miss much. Another one just like it will come along.

Then, rarely, we get a film experience that makes us leave the theater energized, eager to shout to the hilltops, "You have got to see this film."

Give us a break. It's what we live for.

"Winter's Bone" is just that film.

You have got to see this movie.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree, a teenage girl living on the fringe of American society on a homestead in the Ozarks. She stands in as parent for her two younger siblings. Her father, a small time meth cooker, is long gone. Her mother has retreated into the recesses of her mind.

But if you think Ree is your typical hard-luck, sad story victim character, think again. She handles it just fine, bundling her siblings off to school each morning, showing them how to cook, helping them to fend for themselves, teaching them to hunt squirrel near their mountain home.

She makes it work, until the day the bail bondsman comes to the door. Ree's father put up the family home and land for bond collateral. If he doesn't show for his next court date, the family will be evicted.

Ree sets out to find him and bring him to court. She strides through mountain hollers, doggedly keeping her nose to the faint trail of her father's criminal life.

She exists in a tribe that some will recognize. Call them hillbilly, mountain folk, redneck, they exist all over this country in places far from big cities. Fiercely independent, mountain people settle differences between themselves. A snitch is worse than a thief. Blood ties are deadly serious obligations. Ree understands this world because it is her world as well. Director Debra Granik sets aside her New York sensibilities and very convincingly sets the film smack dab in a holler, filming in threadbare mountain homesteads and rural trailers adorned with satellite dishes.

The story, adapted from the novel by Daniel Woodrell, unfolds with the pacing and menace of a good, old-fashioned Western. Call it an Ozark Western with side flavors of Ozark Goodfellas. Each question Ree asks, each time she refuses to drop the matter, ups the ante. She will see her quest through, or die trying.

In the amazingly capable hands of Jennifer Lawrence, herself an actor of only 19, Ree becomes an epic character while remaining totally believable. She's Ulysses and a teen girl wrapped into one persona.

"My partner [Anne Rosellini] and I," Granik told me when we sat down in Washington DC recently, "Read a lot of female protagonists. There's not a lot that feel inspiring. There are a lot of scripts that deal with very difficult things that happen to women. Or ways in which women are destructive to themselves. Ree was so fundamentally different. She had a clear sense of something she wanted to fight for. She had this very loyal bond with her family, both with the difficult members of her family and with the people she cared the most about, her siblings and her mom. She had to use a lot of her smarts to do things. And she had to stick to something. [With] All these characteristics, you can't help but root for her."

Other characters snap as well. Ree's uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes in a fine performance) is her first resort, but his welcome crackles with menace. Yet, there is more to his character as it unfolds. It's something Granik refers to as the "and" factor. "Sometimes when you stay with someone long enough, even though they might have intimidating qualities or repugnant qualities, sometimes you can see the other traits that exist in them. He's difficult and he has rich loyalty. He has rough ways of steering his nieces' actions, and he wants a good outcome for her. The 'and' in him is a rich thing for any character in a novel or film."

The "and" factor also keeps you guessing as the story moves along. The audience, peeking into an unfamiliar world and rich characters, is wholly absorbed into the story with a conclusion that is completely satisfying.

Winter's Bone, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, feels very different than your average blockbuster. In this case, that's a wonderful thing.

Winter's Bone is rated R for some drug material, language and violent content.