Winter's Bone
Very grim movie.
Imagine if your typical Finebaum caller, say Legend, had a family. This is what it would be like.
Don't ever want to hear anything about Alabama rednecks or trailer trash after watching this look into Mizzourah hillbilly life.
Desperate to save what little her family has 17-year old Ree Dolly sets out determined to buck the hillfolk ways and find her missing daddy before he jumps bail on an upcoming court date and sacrifices the cabin and land he put up as bond. She's essentially alone in the world raising two younger siblings after her mom mentally checked out and dad is either in jail or on the run due to his meth-cooking lifestyle.
The white trash authenticity is outstanding right down to the cheap shit on the walls and cluttered kitchen counters.
If Ree can't find her daddy her only possible hope of escaping the abject misery of her existence is the Army but even that dream has no wings.
There's no grand and tidy resolution, drug-baked dad doesn't magically appear after being rehabbed with the keys to a fantastic new home, Ree doesn't get a miracle scholarship that saves the family. In the end she is what she is and will likely never rise above the anchors of her family's poverty. This film illustrates the shame of that situation because she is obviously smart, she's filled with courage, she's savvy and determined. She clearly aspires to be something other than Ree Dolly, hillbilly meth whore. Too bad that's the only path realistically available to her.
In one of my previous vocations I used to sell/rent furniture, appliances and electronics to people like the Dollys. I can't count the number of times I saw teenage boys and girls who were bright enough but just had nothing. I often wondered what they could have become had they just had half a chance of shedding the burden of their situation. Remember one girl in particular who lived in a rented shack in Holt with her five brothers and sisters, her indifferent mom and her sometimes employed dad (when he wasn't laying out drunk or stoned). She was smart, she was beautiful and with just a sliver of opportunity there's no telling what she could have done with her life. Instead she was married by 17, had a bruised and battered face and a kid by 18, divorced by 20 and strung out on some nasty shit. Last time I saw her was in a mug shot. She looked haggard and mean and her eyes were dead.
But I digress.
The film was very well done. The pace was a little slow, but the tone was right, the actors were all completely believable and the background was depressingly realistic.
Jennifer Lawrence, who played Ree, was fantastic. If she was acting you couldn't tell it. It was like they plucked somebody from the hills and told them to just be themselves. I'll be interested to see her in something else to see if she can carry that same legitimacy to other roles.
Best line came from her uncle to his wife/live-in:
"I already told you to shut up once with my mouth..."
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