Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone is a dark fascinating look at a crime ridden rural landscape. The movie follows a 17 year old girl (played perfectly by Jennifer Lawrence) trying to track down her father who may be dead in the hopes of saving the family home and being able to take care of her two younger siblings.  It is very similar in style to mystery/detective films of the past. Instead of an adult male detective you have a teenage girl and in place of the mean streets of a rainy city you have the mountain environment of an underprivileged drug addicts.

The setting is bleak and the characters are desperate. The stakes are very high as the young protagonist struggles to do everything she can to find her father and save her brother and sister. This is one of the best independent films I have seen in a very long time. The plot is simple and straightforward and told in an incredibly tight form. The people are the focus and even the smallest roles seem so layered and real. I was blown away by all the performances. At one point Lawrence’s character Ree visits an army recruiter in hopes of getting money for her family by enlisting and the recruiter is played outstandingly. This actor has only moments of screen time and is able to produce a fully formed character that seems pulled from a documentary rather than a narrative film. He is just but one example of the many outstanding performances in the film.

John Hawkes who is an always solid character actor turns in a great performance as Ree’s uncle Teardrop. He is a frightening and complex man torn by his loyalty to his life, his family and his addiction. The two’s journey together is a unique thing to watch and very well scripted.

The movie has been nominated for several Academy Awards (including Best Picture and nods for Lawrence and Hawkes) and worthy of all the praise it can get. It is a dark and rewarding film that should have been released to a much larger audience than it was offered to. For almost the entire running time there is a sense of dread that is strong to the point of draining. You know that this story will not likely turn out well. But thanks to the incredible performance of Jennifer Lawrence you never want to turn away. You want to follow her as far as she is willing to go to find justice or at least survival for her family.