Debra Granik
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Because this Ozark world has so often been portrayed as an ingrown cabal of hillbillies with banjos straight out of "Deliverance," it takes a while to realize just how rigorously Granik has revamped that caricature.
Yes, these hillbillies can look clichéd, like frames lifted from Deliverance.
What “Winter’s Bone” doesn’t do is soften their edges with buffoonery (like Hillary Swank’s Missouri relatives in “Million Dollar Baby”) or try to make them unnecessarily villainous (pretty much every back wood nightmare film since “Deliverance”).
Although the banjo does make an appearance in a clever little nod to Deliverance, Granik and her film crew managed to chip away at the hill country stereotypes while adding some new visions to what we?ve seen before.
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
This is sort of like Captain Fantastic —another Bleecker Street release, like Leave No Trace—but not as quirky (I see you, Hot Dad Viggo Mortensen ), and also sort of like this year’s A24 release Lean on Pete , but not as interested in the ramifications of inherited poverty.
Should she be required to? (These are similar to themes addressed in 2016’s Captain Fantastic .)
Compared to similarly themed fare, the movie is more profoundly affecting than the likable but light “Hearts Beat Loud” and more believable than the colorful “Captain Fantastic.”
With echoes of The Ballad Of Jack And Rose and Captain Fantastic , Leave No Trace is a close study of a father who has turned his back on humanity and the child he raises in this unconventional wilderness lifestyle.
…fight against the system, a la the similarly themed 2016 Sundance hit Captain Fantastic —or some kind of horror of exploitation.
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
In films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt presents the region as a place where life is tough and the people persist in a quiet, gentle way.
Leave No Trace feels like it belongs to a school of Northwest neorealism I most closely associate with Kelly Reichardt, the Portland-based director whose film Wendy and Lucy was about the tragic mercy that strangers extend to one another when they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Though Granik’s approach is reminiscent of the sensitive, stripped-down style of Kelly Reichardt’s work (“Wendy and Lucy,” “Certain Women”), by reteaming with Scottish cinematographer Michael McDonough (who shot not only “Winter’s Bone,” but also Terence Davies’ radiant “Sunset Song” and the gritty prison drama “Starred Up”), she creates a richer visual environment in which to dwell.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Riegel’s work here is often compared to Debra Granik’s films — Holler has the gritty lower-class setting of Winter’s Bone , and Barden’s performance is reminiscent of Thomasin McKenzie’s in Leave No Trace .
Aside from the tone and social milieu in which both women work, Barden’s extraordinary performance recalls that of the equally talented Thomasin McKenzie in Granik’s Leave No Trace especially; working with these actors, both Granik and Riegel show an eye-opening capacity to understand the nuances of their young women characters, rendering complex an age-and-gender demographic far too often reduced to sexualized cliches into something far more complex and sophisticated.
Following in the footsteps of Debra Graniks’s Winter’s Bone and Leave No Trace and Nia DaCosta’s Little Woods, Riegel explores through a masterful character study how poverty impacts American women.
Granik, a filmmaker known for her minimalist and naturalistic style, all but recreated this American indie sub-genre for modern audiences, further cementing her supremacy with 2018’s achingly human Leave No Trace .
Jennifer Lawrence, who generated a buzz last year in “Winter’s Bone,” anchors the action as Katniss Everdeen, the resourceful 16-year-old heroine who uses her Appalachian woodland skills to compete in the games, a perverse combination of TV reality show, gladiatorial match, popularity contest and survival-of-the-fittest kill-fest.
Katniss and the other tributes are seen in earth-toned realism; this character could be another manifestation, indeed, of Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar-nominated character Ree in “ Winter's Bone .”
But this is when Lawrence is at her best, reminiscent of her brilliant work in "Winter's Bone," for which she received an Oscar nomination.
While she earned an Oscar nod for her role in Winter’s Bone (2010), Lawrence’s emotional range in The Hunger Games cannot be ignored.
As the compelling Katniss, Lawrence (an Oscar nominee for the similarly themed drama Winter's Bone ) completely brings "The Girl on Fire" to life.
Especially for someone who hasn't read the Suzanne Collins trilogy, that relative simplicity is a gift, and it's what propels Gary Ross' film (co-written by Ross, Billy Ray and Collins herself) from the stark Appalachian opener, in which we meet Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, of Winter's Bone), a 16-year-old hunter-gatherer forced to provide for her family after the death of her father, to the heart-pounding start of the deadly game, or “bloodbath” as it's referred to by Everdeen's impromptu trainer, former Games winner Haymitch Abernathy (an excellent Woody Harrelson).
The Road (2009)
Directed by John Hillcoat
influenced Leave No Trace (2018), Winter's Bone (2010)
Themes Visuals
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
I was reminded often of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic parenting thriller The Road ; I was also sometimes reminded of Manchester by the Sea , with its narrative of a man unable to shake his demons.
This could be some postapocalyptic scenario — like the father-child pair seen in that other Viggo Mortensen movie, “The Road” — except that neither nuclear war nor zombie outbreak has forced them into such straits.
In fact, he has more of an arc, as Teardrop begins as a scary tweeker then pulls something up from out of his past, notably when he stands down Sheriff Baskin (Garret Dillahunt, "The Road").
She treks through a landscape scarcely less ruined than the one in Cormac McCarthy's " The Road ."
It’s a story that might remind some of such films as Captain Fantastic and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, both curiously starring Viggo Mortensen, or perhaps Kelly Reichardt’s small dramas set in the American Northwest (Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy).
In films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt presents the region as a place where life is tough and the people persist in a quiet, gentle way.
Like “Frozen River,” the perceptive authenticity rings true despite the low budget.
There is also something resonant about "Winter's Bone" that make it more than just this year's "Frozen River."
(The situation, environment and hardscrabble realism are among many elements that connect "Winter's Bone" to "Frozen River," written and directed by native Memphian Courtney Hunt; in fact, "Bone" won the Grand Jury Award for drama at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the same prize collected by "River" in 2008.)
Last year it was Frozen River; this year it's Winter's Bone.
We have reviewed three recent ones: Frozen River , Chop Shop , and Wendy and Lucy .
This film is reminiscent of 2008's Frozen River, the family matriarch bent on protecting her family in the dead of winter while contending with criminal elements.
At first alone in the woods, Scotty comes across fierce survivalist Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a pale-faced warrior apparently inspired by Jennifer Laurence’s individualistic teen in “Winter’s Bone.”
The answer doesn’t come without some help, namely from alien Jaylah (played by Sofia Boutella and inspired by Jennifer Lawrence’s character in Winter’s Bone ; even her name is basically a form of J. Law).
For all of his bold (and, in my opinion, justified) critiques of contemporary capitalism — which remind me of Allie Fox, the half-mad prophet of Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast — Will exposes, at times, a sense of helplessness and grief, a knowledge that he has lost the way back to balance and wisdom.
But this isn’t “The Mosquito Coast” or even “Captain Fantastic,” the off-the-grid approach that Will has adopted isn’t guided by a political philosophy, or, frankly, any philosophy that is identifiable.
Though Granik’s approach is reminiscent of the sensitive, stripped-down style of Kelly Reichardt’s work (“Wendy and Lucy,” “Certain Women”), by reteaming with Scottish cinematographer Michael McDonough (who shot not only “Winter’s Bone,” but also Terence Davies’ radiant “Sunset Song” and the gritty prison drama “Starred Up”), she creates a richer visual environment in which to dwell.
What prevents it from becoming a chore, besides the engulfing, unshowy vistas lensed by cinematographer Michael McDonough (“Sunset Song”), is an unspoken tension between the characters.
Shot by Michael McDonough (“Sunset Song”), these opening scenes establish the film as one that beautifully straddles the line between the realistic and the lyrical.
Much like the Dardennes, Granick allows her story's meaning to derive subtly from a steady, near-inconspicuous accumulation of nuances from the life of its main character, but unlike another Sundance champ, Lance Hammer's something-blue-something-borrowed-nothing-new Ballast , Granik's style isn't actually indebted to the master filmmakers behind The Son and L'Enfant .
The Short History of the Long Road (2019)
Directed by Ani Simon-Kennedy
influenced by Leave No Trace (2018)
Plot Characters Themes
As The Short History initially hits the road, it echoes 2018’s haunting Leave No Trace , introducing another off-the-grid father-daughter team.
In that regard, the well-taught and self-sufficient Nola, gifted especially in car mechanics like her dad, could be a spiritual sister of Thomasin McKenzie’s character in Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace,” another unassuming cinematic ode to those who live on the high-stakes fringes of American civilization.
Although some people might think this movie is similar to the 2018 film “Leave No Trace” (another grim story about a homeless, paranoid father raising his teenage daughter outside of the norms of society), “The Short History of the Long Road” is not the same kind of movie because it’s not as depressing as “Leave No Trace.”
But this isn’t the story of a young woman who resents her free-spirited, irresponsible dad, like the children of the characters played by Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace .
Like Viggo Mortensen’s wildly unconventional father in “Captain Fantastic” (2016) and Ben Foster’s wildly unconventional father in “Leave No Trace” (2018), who raised their children off the grid and on the outskirts of civilization, Steven Ogg’s wildly unconventional father in “The Short History of the Long Road” is leading his teenage daughter down that same path.
Like Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy or Granik's Leave No Trace, this low-key drama focuses on a regional American woman trying to sustain herself through rough economic and emotional times.
Her evolution mirrors her character's in the same way Jennifer Lawrence's did in "Winter's Bone," a breakout performance in a very different role.
These scenes of the fellow nomads reminded me of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace , another film that looks at someone trying to live a new and unconventional life after suffering trauma.
Several directors have examined working class characters in ‘middle’ America, particularly since 2016, mostly extremely sensitively, including in Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2017), Mobile Homes (Vladimir de Fontenay, 2017), Weightless (Jaron Albertin, 2017), Little Woods (Nia DaCosta, 2018), We the Animals (Jeremiah Zagar, 2018) and Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018).
The filmmaker gazes at her quiet, stoic characters the way, say, Carroll Ballard looked at a shipwrecked boy and horse in “The Black Stallion.”
American Honey (2016)
Directed by Andrea Arnold
influenced Winter's Bone (2010), Leave No Trace (2018)
Characters Themes
McKenzie tells us everything about Tom with very few lines of dialogue: When she finds a rabbit loping along the side of the road, she scoops it up and finds her way to its owner, a sweet-faced boy (played by Isaiah Stone, also seen in Winter’s Bone and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey ) who suggests that if she likes rabbits, she might like to come ’round to a local club that teaches kids how to care for them.
Lane, whom Arnold discovered lounging on a Miami beach, recalls Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, balancing an inherent toughness with the fragility of girlhood.
This is what American desperation looks like, a “Winter’s Bone” that’s gotten a grip far beyond the Ozarks.
Apart from the similar tense aesthetic the film shares with the previous year’s Winter’s Bone, the two pictures also feature John Hawkes in two very different, yet subtly sinister performances.
In Martha Marcy May Marlene, the younger sister of the Olsen twins delivers a breakthrough performance that will remind many of Jennifer Lawrence's excellent work last year in the similarly unsettling (though clearly superior) Winter's Bone.
And indeed it works in a similar quiet, spooky style as last year’s “Winter’s Bone,” which got Oscar nominations for best picture, for supporting actor John Hawkes and for its then-unknown star Jennifer Lawrence.
“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” the feature debut of writer-director Sean Durkin, was a big talker at Sundance, and it’s easy to see why: Its unsettling portrait of a little-seen existence rivals “Winter’s Bone.”
Writer-director Sean Durkin maintains the mystery about her even as flashbacks start to tell her story, the farm she used to live on, the charismatic guy (John Hawkes of “Winter’s Bone”) who took her in, the daily life in the cult where she was given a new name.
The film obviously wants to fill the same niche as Winter's Bone , and be the geographically precise study of a nasty backwoods cultured anchored by a groundbreaking female lead and John Hawkes as a scary supporting actor, but it's nowhere near as intelligent as that film was, nor as pictorially excellent, it does not have anything meaningful to say about the culture it depicts beyond "cults!
The title character of “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) took similar measures, fleeing into solitude after the Mexican War, but you felt his wary charm and never forgot, for a second, that under the buffer of beard was Robert Redford.
While TOMATG is a wonderful swan song for Robert Redford, 82, — who has said it's his last movie — Beautiful Boy has 24-year-old Timothee Chalamet in a star-making performance (I'm reminded of Jennifer Lawrence's breakout role in Winter's Bone).