Review of Winter's Bone (2010) by Jonathan P — 13 Feb 2012

Winter's Bone is a movie. It has a lot of meth in it.

It's also about the decay of the nuclear family not by means of liberalization, but merely by refusing to grow up and still managing to over-glorify the Armed Forces. It's about people who refuse to change - how they don't want to conform to the world - but seeing themselves at a very terrible standstill (in between modernity and tradition), they have to resort to some of the most terrible things man has ever conceived just to survive. It's a modern American tragedy that shows people trying to live in a town where everything we take for granted just doesn't exist - where women live in constant fear or are suddenly silenced; where being good in the modern sense doesn't cut it; and where the modern law doesn't even work due to the complexities surrounding this old way of living.

It's the post-modern variant of William Faulkner's bibliography and Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind," showing America at its worst and how abiding to tradition will destroy America more so than any of the things that most people in the media fear. Jingoism and gender roles galore.

It doesn't end happily. In fact, it's very real - it doesn't want to end happily because happy endings are contrived. It also knows that if you manage to make any of the characters much like Dirty Harry vigilantes, it will destroy any semblance of realism. Or if they want it to be real, they'd have to be monsters. After all, rapist and murderer extraordinaire Scorpio HAD A LIFE. HE WAS HUMAN.

For the most part, the film's good thanks to its naturalistic performances, especially from Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes. As Ree and Teardrop, they show that there is some good in a community hellbent on being so bad just because they're adamantly against modern society - that they're so much like outcasts. Cinematography's alright, though the shaky cam could be cut out. And I dunno, but I loved that fever dream.

I wish Debra Granik good luck on her future films. If they're better than this, she'll be close to the next Kubrick. This reaches near-Kubrick levels of human contemplations, it's not even funny.