"Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is nothing short of astounding and should garner her at least an Oscar nod"
Set in the Ozarks in rural Missouri, Winter’s Bone is a bleak, often harrowing film, a realist’s look at America’s poorer communities. In many ways, it’s a similar film to Frozen River, a film which garnered much critical praise (included a Best Actress Nomination for Melissa Leo) last year, which also follows a female protagonist as she battles against the clock to save her family home from repossession.
It follows 17 year old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) struggling to look after her two young siblings as her mother sits rocking in a state of near catatonia. She receives word from the local police department that her father secured bail using the house as collateral and that if he doesn’t appear in court in a week’s time, then the house will be reclaimed.
Thus begins a tense tale as Ree attempts to track down her wayward father, all the while negotiating the unspoken local laws of the tight-knit Ozark community, in which questions aren’t welcomed and are even met with naked hostility. This is a place where Sheriff’s cars and policemen are viewed with disdain and the locals have no respect for any law that isn’t their own. She first seeks out her Uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes looking eerily like Charles Manson), who warns her off asking more questions but refuses to say why. Desperate, Ree ignores his warnings and confronts her father’s Meth-dealing associates, ruled with an iron fist by the ominously named Thump.
It’s shot on location in Missouri. Houses lie dilapidated and crumbling, the rusting skeletons of cars litter the landscape, and household detritus and broken machinery fill front yards. Ree’s situation is so desperate that she resorts to hunting squirrels in order to survive. Judging by her siblings’ reactions, this is not an uncommon occurrence. But the rugged unforgiving terrain has a rough-hewn beauty to it despite its wretchedness and it’s credit to cinematographer Michael McDonough that he manages to wring some allure out of a stark landscape that seem utterly implacable.
The denizens of their small town make their presence felt strongly too – grimy, black toothed and gnarled, their very presences are enough to seem threatening – an unforgiving rural landscape with an equally unforgiving population.
Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is nothing short of astounding and should garner her at least an Oscar nod – she imbues Ree with a heroic resilience and determination. Desperate to find answers but constantly aware that she’s walking a very thin line between respect for the local customs and her urgent need for answers and watched silently by the ever vigilant locals, her performance is all about survival. She’s ably supported by John Hawkes as her crack-riddled uncle Teardrop and Dale Dickey as Merab, Thump’s baleful right-hand woman.
It’s an unflinching film, one that shows close up the effects that meth can have upon a rural community but at its heart, it’s a downbeat story of resilience and courage against a tide of misery which seems to have no respite and no escape.