WINTER’S BONE A
USA (100 mi) 2010 d: Debra Granik
“He didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, and finally did.”
—Teardrop (John Hawkes)
—Teardrop (John Hawkes)
An outstanding film, certainly one of the films of the year, a performance driven work that digs deeper into the protectivist, individualistic spirit of America than anything else seen in recent memory, certainly matching the mood of the nation at the moment which may feel the government is overextending into the lives of private citizens. Not sure there’s another film out there where visiting your family represents such a life-threatening risk, as the backwoods rural view of government and authority is so low here that they’ll do anything to keep it out of their life, even risk death in various confrontations with the police, as people in this neck of the woods believe that individual freedom comes with the right to exclude any and all persons from their property, including their own kin. Of course, if they’re manufacturing crank in crystal meth labs, that might have something to do with it, much like Kentucky bootleggers whose families for generations have survived by building homegrown stills. Nevertheless, this unflinching backwoods criminal exposé layered in silence and ancient rituals of honor features individuals fighting with every fiber of their body to protect what they’ve got, even when what they’ve got is pretty close to nothing. It’s an amazing portrait of a bleak, isolated, rural American culture in the mountainous Ozarks that is so outside the mainstream that much of it resembles the empty, rundown, post-apocalyptic future depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s nightmarish The Road
(2009). Shot on an indie budget of $2 million dollars entirely in two counties in Missouri, locals were used in speaking parts and as extras in order to keep the regional dialect as accurate as possible, including singer Marideth Sisco who was discovered during singing practices and the roles of both younger siblings. While the New York director co-wrote a script with Anne Rossellini from a novel by Ozark resident Daniel Woodrell, mostly what’s riveting here are the tense face to face confrontations between family members, where access is as guarded and secretive as the Cosa Nostra, with equally violent threats and horrible outcomes.
It’s extremely well-written and closely observed, without an ounce of condescension or moral pretense, carefully outlining the landscape, people, and regional habits, featuring unforgettable performances that blindside the audience with the innate force of a shipwreck, as the viewer is plunged directly into the heart of an underground culture where some archaic unwritten code seems to thrive in the form of intensely driven desperation that remains out of sight, under the surface, where one set of standards exists for men, another for women. “Ain't you got no men that can do this?” opens the door into women’s business, where they ruthlessly protect the criminal business interests of their men, even from family. But to those living there who have a realistic sense of just who and what they’re dealing with, these are some eerily frightening players to go up against, as they’d just as soon hurt you or even kill you than have to talk to you, as every little bit of understanding, if word gets out, can only hurt their operations. “Talking just causes witnesses.” Trying to make her way through this world is Jennifer Lawrence as Ree, a determined and single-minded 17-year old who has been left by her father to raise her mentally incapacitated mother and two young siblings on her own in their ramshackle house with only hand-outs from neighbors and an occasional squirrel to shoot. Ree’s father is on the run from the law, charged with cooking crystal meth, but he put the house and land up to remain out on bail, and his whereabouts are a mystery she quickly needs to solve. If he misses his scheduled court appearance, within a week she could lose the house, leaving them all out in the cold. In desperation, she searches for him, trying to find the truth about where he is, dead or alive, but runs into brick walls from highly resistant family members who warn her that she’s stirring up trouble. Turning to her dad’s brother, the skeletal Teardrop (John Hawkes), he’s a fierce man with an attitude, as he understands the lay of the land, but he can’t help Ree, as if her dad has dropped out of sight, it’s for a reason. He nearly breaks her neck to prove the point, and then takes it out on his wife. Men rule the roost in these parts and there’s little women can do about it. It’s a drug-infested world where there’s a lucrative pipeline of money to be made, yet people live in broken-down shacks and subside on next to nothing to reveal nothing out of the ordinary, offering no signs to the police. Whatever happens takes place on the privacy of their land and it’s nobody else’s business to come sniffing around asking questions. This is the way, followed with near Biblical enforcement.
Like The Odyssey or Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, there’s a lot more going on here under the surface as Ree moves deeper into the stealthful operations of her family, each character is carefully drawn, filled with the wretched lack of humanity that defines many of them, yet they also offer small doses of kindness and make an effort to respect her family name. Dale Dickey as Merab is positively superb as the crusty wife of Ree’s grandfather, a Vietnam vet wearing a “Stray Dog” biker jacket known as Thump Milton (Ronnie Hall), a man she fears more than any who runs the more difficult side of the family operations which is kept completely off limits, so Ree is quickly shown the door, along with a parting cup of coffee and a reminder that they won’t be so hospitable next time. As the intensity mounts and Ree’s desperation grows, the atmosphere borders on horror suspense, as the promise of a wrath of violence continually lurks under the surface with a looming ferocity. When her dad’s court date comes and he never shows, Ree coldly awaits eviction but soon faces her grandfather’s punishment instead and is hauled off into the barn for a brutal (offscreen) ass-kicking from Merab and the other women, where the camera doesn’t linger on the physical infliction, only the painful consequences for the sins of her father where the thought of death is close at hand and held in judgment by a vengeful clan of societal rejects, people who answer to no law but their own. Who should show up, but Teardrop of all people? He knows what he needs to know and offers his say, in so many words, which has the poetic sound of grace to it. It’s an exquisite moment, like a miracle or an answered prayer, but one that has the ring of truth, as there’s no doubt every ear is listening. But there’s a hellish underside to this eloquence, something Ree suspects, calling it family intuition. When she later reveals to Teardrop, “You have always scared me,” he promptly points out “That’s ‘cause you’re smart.” But there is still more hell to pay. What is left borders on the surreal, as if existing only in the imagination, as it couldn’t possibly be real. But throughout this entire ordeal, one fact never wavers, and that is Ree’s steely resolve to answer for her father’s sins, to face them head on with no illusions or false hope. Thrust into the middle of a turbulent nightmare, you get the sense she will find the right balance and weather all storms. So far, Lawrence’s quiet resiliency is the performance of the year.
