Winter’s Bone dir. by Debra Granik (review)

Beady-eyed drug users. Corrupt police. Corpse dismemberment. This is not Garrison Keillor’s Midwest; Winter’s Bone (2010) is more like “Lake Woe-be-ever-present” than Woebegon. Set in the hardscrabble Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri, director Debra Granik’s film offers viewers a side of the Midwest rarely captured in film. Instead of the more stereotypical midwesterner (happy, round, docile, and a bit daft), Granik’s world of midwestern rural poverty features characters dealing with crippling drug addiction, oppressive gender roles, and a catastrophic lack of economic opportunities. The film stars pre-fame Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a young woman out to save her family home from foreclosure due to a bail bond default caused by her missing father, a notorious local meth cook. No, Winter’s Bone is not The Hunger Games, but its scenes sometimes feel so bleak that viewers would not be wrong for confusing the two films.

Granik achieves a gothic aesthetic by exploiting the cold, natural feel of the local environment. The film was shot on location at several different homesteads in southwest Missouri.¹ The rolling countryside is pretty, but the ubiquitous junk strewn across the front yards of worn-out, prefabricated homes cancels out any natural bucolic splendor. The Ozark sky is apparently always cloudy, and the lack of sunlight creates flat, stiff images consonant with the tone of the film. But the picture’s flat aesthetic is not limited to the natural environment. Sequences featuring live music jam sessions in bars are stoic, ominous events—even the most raucous parties in Winter’s Bone cannot escape its persistent joylessness. While this harsh and unforgiving mood works to reinforce the difficulties Ree faces in her odyssey, it renders the Midwest a land of grays, clouds, and eerie quiet.

One might think that a journey into rural poverty demands such a somber tone, but comparisons with other films dealing with similar themes show that moments of happiness and joy are not mutually exclusive with threadbare country living. Take, for instance, the 2009 documentary film The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.² The Whites are by no means of means. As another poor family living with the consequences of the illegal drug trade (pill-milled opioids instead of homemade amphetamines), the Whites are similarly haunted by early death and a lack of economic options. Unlike the stark personages of Winter’s Bone, though, the members of the White family seem to enjoy and revel in their lifestyle and choices, at least some of the time. In contrast to the White’s devil-may-care attitude, Ree Dolly and the cast of Winter’s Bone are perpetually somber.

Of course, the comparison of a documentary and a narrative film is imperfect. Granik’s decision to make the Ozarks almost achromatic is a choice that reinforces her film’s themes. John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) also explores rural poverty as a theme, but does so through a form of othering—Burt Reynolds and his friends on that ill-fated float trip are outsiders, often gawking at the rural caricatures they encounter.³ Their tribulations on what amounts to a rural safari are almost a comeuppance for their arrogance and supposed superiority. Both Winter’s Bone and Deliverance delve into dark themes that present rural culture as inherently violent, but Granik takes greater care to be fair and evenhanded with her depictions of rural life and mores. There is a crafty cleverness to many of her characters, and their social environment operates under a set of agreed upon rules. Granik filmed on location, often in people’s homes, and used their furniture and decorations to maintain a sense of verisimilitude. She respects her hosts too much to caricature them like the rural antagonists in Deliverance.

Ultimately, the oppressive Ozark environment and economy dooms the characters in Winter’s Bone. Ree completes her quest and saves the family home, but she is still left with the burden of raising her brother and sister while caring for their catatonic mother. Ree’s fate...