Winter’s Bone (2010)

As the horrible deluge of mediocre and bad summer films darken the seas and skies of the movie world, a small light emerges, a beacon of hope for movie lovers. It’s a place calling out to moviegoers who aren’t interested in the latest special effects or the hotness and popularity of the leads. It’s a place where for a hefty fee you can take a cup of your favorite alcoholic beverage into the theater. It is the art-house cinema, a place where it’s all about the quality of the movies, not quantity of the audience.

About once or twice a year I take a trek up to the nearest art-house theater and enjoy all the stuff that I usually don’t see until it’s released onDVD. My latest excursion up north gave me the opportunity to check out Cyrus and Winter’s Bone, two films that I desperately needed to see. Stuck in arena of the multiplex, my standards had declined considerable. I tricked myself into thinking The A-Team and Eclipse were actually good films.

Winter’s Bone put an end to all that rubbish, reminding me why I loved movies to begin with. Unlike all the easy to watch summer films I’ve seen so far, Winter’s Bone was actually challenging, it made me think, had me working to try to understand what I was watching and pulled me into the situations, problems and issues the characters faced. Here was not some piece of salty entertainment, but a proper film, unflinching in its vision and unwilling to pull the punches.

And Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) could do with a few pulled punches. When her father goes missing after puting their house up for bail, it’s up to her to hunt him down so he can meet his court date. Otherwise, she’ll be left wandering the cold Ozark Mountains with her mother and two younger siblings. At every turn and each question she’s left out in the cold, the harshness of the weather only rivaled by the hearts of the people who’ve endured it.

As Ree Dolly ventures throughout the Ozark region, she burdened by the desolate landscape, twisted leafless trees and greyed mountains jut out, pulling at the fabric of the film, gnawing away at the sanity of the locals. The omnipresent oppression of the land shapes and hues the story more than any character, action or institution. Everyone is at its mercy, its gnarly grip have clutched the heart and mind of every inhabitant.

And amid it all Ree endures. After dropping off her siblings at school, she longingly glances into the home-ec room, watching goofy teenagers caress plastic baby dolls. Instead of joining them, she returns home and begins chopping firewood. Later, she hunts squirrels with her siblings and shows them how to skin them, a gross act to be sure, but an act of survival. It’s in the simple moments that Ree is defined stronger than any words, her persistence and tenacity emerging from her will to keep this family alive.

Jennifer Lawrence embodies this character completely. It isn’t so much acting as it is living out the part. Not for one moment does it ever seem as if she is playing Ree. For all intents and purposes, she is Ree as long as the film is rolling. Likewise, across the board the performances are naturalistic to the point that you wonder if these people are actually actors. Maybe, just maybe they are really these people, at least for the moments they appear on the film.

John Hawkes, in particular, was born for this kind of role. If I hadn’t seen him in other films and shows before I would have sworn that this was some guy they found that was Teardrop. Likewise, the rest of these characters seem as if they’ve been living in the Ozark their whole life. It may not be as grand, theatrical or bold as some of the great performers of the age, but for this film and in this setting the acting is sublime.

The story, if it could be called such, is left so much in implications, imaginations and unsolidified associations that it becomes as tangled and impenetrable as the landscape. Characters think they understand and believe they know what actually happened but there’s nothing solid, nothing consistent to back up any of the many stories each character has woven as to what has happed to Dolly.

Nothing I’ve seen so far this year comes close to touching Winter’s Bone. It’s in a class of its own, the kind of filmmaking that defies so many filmmakers, a film that breaths and comes to life, embodying so much by getting the most out of so little. While so many films try to overwhelm with bigger and bigger spectacles, it’s the small films that show the mastery of the craft, undiluted, understated and unrivaled.