Winter’s Bone is a stark film. The story is bleak and mostly depressing. The character’s lives are harsh and carved out of a severe landscape; the Ozark region of Missouri. In this small, impoverished community drugs are the business and clannish law is followed at punishment of death. 17 year old Ree’s father has missed his court date after putting the family property up for his bail. With her mother too ill to help, Ree must raise two young children and find her father.
Winter’s Bone is the opposite of melodramatic. There are several angles into which the film could turn (drug story, missing person’s thriller, horror), but it resists these temptations and opts always for brutal realism. The problem with this is that the film is so stripped to the bone that unless you completely invest in the story and the characters from the very beginning, then it can be hard going. This is a problem that The Wrestler (2008) suffered from. Both films share much in common; they follow a protagonist struggling to keep their life together under enormous pressure. Both also present a view of America we rarely see. The unpolished areas. The realism of the country where tourism doesn’t reach. Yet, because both reject melodrama, their lead characters are vey low-key and also, in many ways, clichéd. They are simply stripped down clichés.
Winter’s Bone is a very well made film and its dedication to its subject matter and the realism of the environment is commendable. It feels longer than its 100 minutes and at times almost documentary like, yet it remains compelling and at times shocking throughout.
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