Winter’s Bone

Del­i­cate and dis­turb­ing, Winter’s Bone focus­es on a fam­i­ly gnarled from gen­er­a­tions of self-suf­fi­cien­cy in Missouri’s Ozark moun­tains. Addict­ed to crys­tal meth, their makeshift labs scar a wood­land cap­tured in leaf-crisp detail by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Michael McDo­nough. A reveal­ing open­er shows the drug’s heinous effects on the com­mu­ni­ty, as two par­ent­less kids play on reclaimed tram­po­lines. This is a world of bro­ken toys and dirty rags.

The effects of the drug force 17-year-old Ree Dol­ly (Jen­nifer Lawrence) to leave school; she’s need­ed at home to nurse her mute, depres­sive moth­er and two sib­lings. Her dad has been arrest­ed – caught cook­ing crys­tal – and skipped bail. Alone and pen­ni­less, Ree tries to join the army, only to be turned down. She want­ed to bring her sib­lings along but she can’t leave them, not even for the promise of the army’s $40,000.

Lawrence sto­ical­ly car­ries the weight of this career-defin­ing role. With a face that flips between teen defi­ance and ten­der youth, she owns every scene she’s in – and that’s every one. Sup­port­ing her, John Hawkes excels as Ree’s crazed, drug-addict­ed uncle Teardrop.

When a cop warns Ree that her father is miss­ing and close to for­feit­ing his bond (the fam­i­ly home), she has no choice but to unearth him. Brave­ly ignor­ing vio­lent threats to steer clear of the fam­i­ly busi­ness, Ree sets off to inter­ro­gate her fear­some rel­a­tives about his where­abouts. She will find her dad, she tells them, dead or alive. Cue men­ace. Cue intrigue. Cue the dead­ly Thump Mil­ton (Ron­nie Hall) and a grue­some bone-saw­ing scene that will haunt your mem­o­ry forever.

“Ain’t you got no man who could do this for you?” Ree is asked. ​“No ma’am, I don’t.” It’s a telling line, for despite the bru­tal­i­ty shown to Ree by her kin, direc­tor Debra Granik main­tains that a sem­blance of local man­ners – Bap­tist-bred and patri­ar­chal – cling to the back­woods of Winter’s Bone.

Granik’s nuanced atten­tion to detail morphs this sim­ple who­dun­nit into a dark and brood­ing dra­ma. She lets local lan­guage and scenery run riot, spin­ning an old-fash­ioned quest into some­thing more. We get close-ups of wood­land, a mat­ter-of-fact look at the insides of a fresh­ly shot squir­rel (din­ner for Ree and the kids), and a peek inside an insu­lar par­ty of wrin­kled Ozarks croon­ing bit­ter­sweet folksongs.

Rough vio­lence is tem­pered by defi­ant human­ism. In an ear­ly scene that high­lights their pover­ty, Ree rep­ri­mands her lit­tle broth­er for cov­et­ing their neighbour’s hearty meal. ​“Nev­er ask for what ought to be giv­en,” she instructs. Sure enough that night they receive a free dinner.

But every­thing else is implic­it threat, and the film creaks with men­ace. It’s unmissable.