Winter's Bone (2010)
Directed by Debra Granik
After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.
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What critics say influenced Winter's Bone
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.
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.
(Granik’s first feature, the 2004 Down to the Bone, in which Vera Farmiga played a working-class, cocaine-using mom, was similarly acclaimed.)
Granik’s film, her second feature after 2004’s Down to the Bone, shares more than a few similarities with that astounding debut.
Writer-director Debra Granik made her feature debut with Down to the Bone (2004), a stark working-class drama with Vera Farmiga giving a breakout performance as a coke-addicted young mother.
Director Debra Granik, who previously gave us Vera Farmiga 's breakthrough in Down to the Bone, is to be commended…and watched.
Her first full-length film, 2004âs Down to the Bone, was the first time most people recall every seeing Vera Farmiga onscreen, where her gut-wrenching performance left viewers amazed.
Director/co-writer Debra Granik, who previously wrote/directed Down to the Bone, combines drama, mystery and suspense with mixed results.
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 .
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The supporting actors?among them, John Hawkes (2007's " American Gangster ") as loose cannon Uncle Teardrop, feeling a sense of protectiveness over his only brother's children; Dale Dickey (2009's " The Perfect Getaway ") as Merab, a short-fused enigma of empathy and viciousness in her actions toward Ree; newcomer Lauren Sweetser as Gail, Ree's best friend, already with baby and in a faltering marriage; Shelley Weggener (2002's " Punch-Drunk Love ") as Sonya, the Dollys' neighbor; and Sheryl Lee (1998's " Vampires ") as April, a former lover of Ree's father with key information to give her?strike not a single false note, each one looking not like performers but like real residents of the Ozark Mountains.
Although he was endearing in films like Me and You and Everyone We Know, if a sometimes surprising love interest, here his craggy features and thin, worn-out frame blend perfectly into the landscape; he’s a man ravaged by abuse, who’s been given one last shot at redemption.
After a memorable turn in Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain” (2008), Jennifer Lawrence never overplays the pathos, delivering what may be this young actress’s breakthrough performance.
At the center of Winter's Bone is Jennifer Lawrence, a young actress with a few credits (including a significant role in 2008's Charlize Theron drama The Burning Plain).
The supporting actors?among them, John Hawkes (2007's " American Gangster ") as loose cannon Uncle Teardrop, feeling a sense of protectiveness over his only brother's children; Dale Dickey (2009's " The Perfect Getaway ") as Merab, a short-fused enigma of empathy and viciousness in her actions toward Ree; newcomer Lauren Sweetser as Gail, Ree's best friend, already with baby and in a faltering marriage; Shelley Weggener (2002's " Punch-Drunk Love ") as Sonya, the Dollys' neighbor; and Sheryl Lee (1998's " Vampires ") as April, a former lover of Ree's father with key information to give her?strike not a single false note, each one looking not like performers but like real residents of the Ozark Mountains.
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This is more of a sick, strange “The Wizard of Oz”: Ree encounters family members who talk endlessly about kinship, but seem more interested in traveling the yellow brick road of running drugs and making money.
The supporting actors?among them, John Hawkes (2007's " American Gangster ") as loose cannon Uncle Teardrop, feeling a sense of protectiveness over his only brother's children; Dale Dickey (2009's " The Perfect Getaway ") as Merab, a short-fused enigma of empathy and viciousness in her actions toward Ree; newcomer Lauren Sweetser as Gail, Ree's best friend, already with baby and in a faltering marriage; Shelley Weggener (2002's " Punch-Drunk Love ") as Sonya, the Dollys' neighbor; and Sheryl Lee (1998's " Vampires ") as April, a former lover of Ree's father with key information to give her?strike not a single false note, each one looking not like performers but like real residents of the Ozark Mountains.
Ree’s a high-school dropout to make ends meet, her best friend Gail (Lauren Sweetser in her feature debut) is married with a child, and she has to act carefully around verbally-abusive relatives such as her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes; American Gangster).