An
icy chill runs through Debra Granik’s raw, riveting Winter’s Bone, released in 2010. The film offers a tough,
unflinching look at an impoverished Missouri community steeped in an insidious,
feral, gender-segregated culture of illegal drug trade. Inflexible notions of
obligation, honor, and shame, rigid
obedience, and barely sublimated violence rule these rural hills and hollows. Granik
creates an atmosphere of suspicion, foreboding, and everyday misery, turning Winter’s Bone into a stark, forceful,
breathless thriller. Her movie is a realistic, gritty documentary portrait of a
time and a place, a crime family melodrama, a Gothic Southern tale, a country
noir, an ancient odyssey, and, most importantly of all, a powerful and poignant
coming of age story of a young girl forced to mature into a strong,
self-reliant, proud young woman. Ree Dolly (a nineteen year old Jennifer
Lawrence in what is perhaps her greatest performance), provides the fierce,
still center of the film, an ordinary, plain-spoken girl who becomes
extraordinary through her unwavering resilience in the face of seemingly
insurmountable physical and emotional obstacles. Like a modern-day Antigone,
she depends on a dogged, unshakable faith that people will do the right thing,
her stubborn sense of justice coming into sharp and dangerous conflict with the
deep, intractable customs of the Ozarks.***This is an in-depth analysis of Winter's Bone, and therefore contains spoilers.
