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Winter’s Bone

directed by Debra Granik

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Sep 27, 2022
Category: Drama

Odds are that you haven’t seen “Winter’s Bone.” It was made for $2 million, it grossed only $13 million. If the film is remembered at all, it’s because it launched Jennifer Lawrence. It did much more than that. It premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to claim its Grand Jury Prize. It was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (John Hawkes) and Best Adapted Screenplay. The screenplay nomination went to Debra Granik, the director, and her co-writer. [To watch the preview, click here. To stream the movie on Amazon Prime, click here.]

“Winter’s Bone” could not be grittier. Set in the bleak Ozarks of  Missouri, we find ourselves among the rural poor: cramped trailers, plastic stretched over the windows in winter, not a Volvo in sight. And the Dollys are among the most wretched.

Jessup Dolly was busted a while back for cooking meth. To make bond, he put up his family’s house and 300 acres of virgin timber. Now his court date is a week away — and he’s nowhere to be found. The local lawman comes out to warn Ree that the Dollys are in danger of losing their home.

Ree’s mother has suffered a breakdown and is of no help, either in caring for her children or finding her husband. Which makes 17-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) responsible for her young sister and brother — and for tracking her father down. Ree’s quest is a walk on a knife edge; she can’t turn in her father, she can only ask for help in finding him so she can talk to him. And the only people who can help her? His relatives. Some of them make the most addictive drug on the planet. All of them don’t understand why she can’t remember she’s a Dolly — “bred and buttered,” as she says — and just stop. As they say, “Talking just causes witnesses.”

Much of the cast is local and non-professional — and, no offense, but they look like people who might make crank, who could scare the shit out of you at traffic lights with a sidelong glance, who would quiet you once with “I already told you to shut up with my mouth” and let their hands do the talking after that.

“Winter’s Bone” is both painful to watch and impossible to turn away from. There’s a scene with the squirrel. And Ree’s desperate attempt to convince an Army recruiter — who’s played by an Army recruiter — to let her enlist for five years so she can collect the government’s $40,000 bonus. And a climax so remarkable, so distant from anything you know as reality, that you’ll never forget it.

And then you’ll be ready to start to look for any film directed by Debra Granik. Like her next film, “Leave No Trace,” which is just as good as “Winter’s Bone.” Watch the trailer. To stream the film on Amazon Prime, click here.