Winter's Bone

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, Kevin Breznahan, Dale Dickey, Shelley Waggener
Directed by: Debra Granik
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, Thriller
2010

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: In the rural Ozarks, a young girl (Jennifer Lawrence) begins a search for her missing father, after their family is threatened with losing their house. She clashes with a number of people in the area, some whom don't want him found.

Review:

Tim: Winter's Bone is a critically acclaimed look at a poor rural Ozark area family. It touches on themes like loyalty, opportunity, redemption, and right and wrong. It is a stripped down, oftentimes depressing and occasionally beautiful movie. The movie unfolds very slowly. There are very few quick scenes in the entire film. I definitely understand why so many critics loved it. I thought it was a good movie, but not great. This is the kind of movie critics love to love. I only liked it.

The film deserves credit for really doing a terrific job of painting this rural Ozark woods environment. There is a great deal of poverty, but there is also a great deal of kinship. The movie portrayed a little seen view of Missouri, a place that seems very foreign to us. Where there is a great deal of poverty, there also sometimes overhangs a feeling of depression. This movie is quite depressing. There is very little here to be happy about. This movie takes place in a world where even "happy" endings are still tinged with a great deal of sadness. I loved the realistic, gritty portrayal of this part of the world.

The cast is quite good. Jennifer Lawrence is fairly stunning in the lead role, but in a quiet, reserved way. She does such an amazing job, but it would be easy to overlook her greatness here. She speaks so much with her body language and her ability to communicate with her eyes. She gives a very, very impressive performance. While Lawrence was excellent, I have to believe the best performance of the entire film belongs to John Hawkes. Hawkes is truly astounding here. I believe he deserves awards for his performance. He delivers a wide, wide range of emotions. His journey from villain to sympathetic character is one of the most stunning moments of the film. Like Lawrence, he is excellent because of all the small, restrained things he does. He's never flashy, never over the top. He simply delivers a truly outstanding performance. I really enjoyed both these actors here, as well as the rest of the supporting cast.

While there were so many things I liked about this movie, it isn't flawless at all. Director Debra Granik does a good job here, but I really wish she had more experience as a director before taking this on. She shows some real flashes of brilliance, but there are too many moments throughout this movie that feel like it was made by someone without much directorial experience. There are some scenes that feel a bit slow and redundant. I love that this movie unfolded in a slow, methodical way, but I also wanted something exciting, something unexpected to happen. While there's a few such moments, I wanted more.

One of my biggest complaints was that it was difficult to get into the story and the characters. I never really felt certain about what I was watching. Some of the dialogue was a bit difficult to hear and understand. There was a whole aspect of the movie about the drug culture in the Ozarks, and I never felt like this was fully and satisfactorily explained. I was left wanting more clarification in this regard. I also had a hard time emotionally connecting to the film. I knew that I was supposed to connect on an emotional level, but it wasn't automatic- it took some effort from me to get there.

Winter's Bone is a good movie that does many things right, but still doesn't do everything needed to become a truly great movie. I think that critics rightly enjoyed this movie, but as often is the case, I believe they slighlty overrated this film. This is good, but it could have been better. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I know I'll be thinking about it for a long time afterwards.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Down to the Bone