Winter's Bone

For those who do not know me: It's not likely that I would pass on a movie set and filmed in the Ozarks, so this one was a 'must see'.

Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 17yr old mountain girl on a quest to find her not-good-for-much meth-cooking father, who put the family's cabin and land up for bond during his latest drug arrest. He's now gone missing, and she's got to find him, lest her little brother and sister and crazy-whacked emotionally comatose mother are cast out into woods.

Along the way she struggles to act as mother, protector and provider to her siblings, while enduring a life of crushing hillbilly poverty.

A little at a time, at threat to her own life, she begins to pull the loose ends together, grabbing clues where she can, dealing with some dangerous folks in an outlaw community where everybody knows something, nobody knows anything, talking is forbidden, and you best not ask.
She's determined, a survivor above anything else, who won't take heed or back down when she hits another dead end.

• The film is strikingly real in it's realism. There are no overdone settings. It's as if they filmed within the actual homesteads of real Ozark rural dwellers. You can't fake what this camera saw. The clutter, the dust, and the grime. It's too subtle to be any other way.

• Panoramic/scenery shots are not included. The Ozarks are known for their beauty, but none of this is included. It's not part of the story. Instead the camera films in close, capturing the people and dialogue, warts and all, in such an intimate way that draws the viewer into the drama, instead of as a spectator. It is as your own eye would see and focus on if you were there in the room, and not peeking through the window.

• The gun culture is on full unabashed display, with zero swagger. Nobody is walking around with a .45, or wielding an AK-47. Firearms are tools of survival first. And is why everybody is not far from a shotgun or squirrel rifle. It's real, and not 'movie-like'.

• There are no teeth-deficient "Deliverance"-types. No cliched presentations of what Hollywood thinks a hillbilly is, how they dress, or how they talk.

• My favorite scene: Ree is teaching her siblings how to prepare the squirrels they just caught... in graphic detail. The camera gets in close. I've cleaned enough squirrels to tell you... these were real squirrels, freshly dead, with real guts and intestines spilling out around that knife.

• Jennifer Lawrence is a very attractive young lady playing the lead. Yet, all of these good-looking looks are overlooked if not completely ignored. The story is the story, and this mission is never forgotten. She's also on camera for nearly every minute, and does such a fine job. Once again, it's the subtleties. The lack of obvious 'acting' that makes her role here so good. She is the character, and not playing the character. Very natural.

I don't recommend this one for everybody. Some movies are designed to entertain, while others tell a story using the artistic medium. This is of the latter. It may be the best film, from an artistic merit, that I'll see this year... and I've still got six months to go.

Maybe even two years.

Winter's Bone, official site Check it out.