MOVIE: Winter's Bone

"Bleak"... sad, and depressing....but wonderfully put together.
Released June 11, 2010
R (1:40)
Saturday 9/11/10 at Crossroads, after returning from Chicago
RT: 95 cag: great movie, but sooo bleak...... 86
Director: Debra Granik
Winner of the 2010 Sundance Best Picture Grand Jury Prize

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, the 17 year old daughter of a n'er do well dad and an almost-catatonic mom living in the Ozark mountains of Missouri. When her dad disappears, and then fails to appear at his hearing, the bail bondsman says Ree has a week before her home and land are taken. She is raising her younger sister and brother...and caring for her mother....alone. She cooks the little food she can obtain for them all, makes sure the kids get to school and do their homework (she's unable to go), cares for her mother, splits the wood, and does much of the worrying. Jennifer Lawrence does a SPECTACULAR acting job in this movie.

John Hawkes plays her father's brother, Teardrop. What a magnificent job he does, too.

The setting is dark and bleak, too. It's just about winter. Everything is gray. Houses are falling apart, built in the early part of the century. Garbage, junk, old cars are everywhere. Everything looks grimy and shoddy. There is very little color at all. And Ree must find out what has happened to her father.

She is hampered at every turn by the strick code of silence that have been the "laws" and "rules" of these closely-related people since their beginnings here. Most of her neighbors are relations. They watch out for each other in a very weird way, but violence, meanness, and silence is their way of life.

One scene is of a gathering of a group of friends/family. Some are playing instruments, a woman is singing a ballad. The music is beautfiul, folky. Ree's father, we discover, has played the banjo, and played it quite well, apparently. This way-of-life is so at odds with the way-of-life of which I am accustomed.

Ree does find her father. It's not a happy story. There's a tiny (very tiny) ray of hope at the end, but the story couldn't have ended in a different way.

The book begins well - I read the first pages of it and wished there were more. Great descriptive background, nice writing style.

And the trailer is really good - you can find it here.