Winter's Bone

Plot synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) looks after her mentally ill mother, her twelve-year-old brother Sonny (Isaiah Stone), and her six-year-old sister Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson). Every day, Ree makes sure her siblings eat, while teaching them basic survival skills like hunting and cooking. The family is destitute. Ree's father, Jessup, has not been home for a long time; his whereabouts are unknown. He is out on bail following an arrest for manufacturing "crank".
Sheriff Baskin (Garret Dillahunt) tells Ree that if her father does not show up for his court date, they will lose the house because it was put up as part of his bond. Ree sets out to find her father, following his trail into the world where meth use is common, violence is frequent, and people are bound by codes of loyalty and secrecy. She starts with her meth-addicted uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and continues on to more distant kin, eventually trying to talk to the local crime boss, Thump Milton (Ronnie Hall). Milton refuses to see her; the only information Ree comes up with are warnings to leave the situation alone and stories that Jessup died in a meth lab fire or skipped town to avoid the trial.
When Jessup fails to appear for the trial, the bondsman (Tate Taylor) comes looking for him and tells Ree that she will have about a week before the house, and land are seized. Ree tells him that Jessup must be dead, because "Dollys don't run." He tells her that she will need to provide proof that her father is dead to avoid the bond being forfeited.
Ree tries to go to see Milton again and is severely beaten by the women of his family. Teardrop shows up and rescues Ree, promising her attackers that she will not say anything or cause any more trouble. Teardrop tells Ree that her father was killed because he was going to inform on other meth cookers, but he does not know who killed him. He warns her that if she ever finds out who did, she must not tell him because the killer would likely kill him as well .
A few nights later, the same three Milton women who beat Ree come to her house. They offer to take her to "[her] daddy's bones." The women place a burlap sack on her head and drive her to a pond, where they get into a rowboat and row to the shallow area where her father's submerged body lies. They tell Ree to reach into the freezing water and grasp her father's hands so they can cut them off with a chainsaw; the severed, decaying arms will serve as proof of death for the authorities. Ree takes the hands to the sheriff, telling him that someone flung them onto the porch of her house.
The bondsman comes back to the house and gives Ree the cash portion of the bond, which was put up by an anonymous associate of Jessup. Ree tries to give Jessup's banjo to Teardrop, but he tells her to keep it at the house for him. As he is leaving, he tells her that he now knows who killed her father. Ree reassures Sonny and Ashlee that she will not ever leave them, regardless of the money she just received.

Tags: boring, mystery, murder, neo noir, dramatic, violence, romantic, revenge

Review:
SPOILER: "But I can't forever carry them kids and my mom, not without that house."Winter's Bone is a stark, almost documentary-like movie about a poor teenage girl named Ree in the Ozarks who supports her near-catatonic mother and two younger siblings during her meth-cooking father's many brushes with the law.
Ree is probably my favorite movie character of the year (well, perhaps next to Hit Girl), and Lawrence plays her with a realism and stubborn toughness that makes you believe that this seventeen year-old girl wouldn't wilt under the kind of circumstances that would overwhelm most adults.
This is land of people that time has passed by.The basic premise of the story is that 17 year old Ree Dolly (played by Jennifer Lawrence) is responsible for raising her brother and sister and caring for her mentally-blank mother while maintaining a mostly positive outlook on the present and future.
Such is the case for young Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in Debra Granik's The Winter's Bone, winner of the Jury Prize for dramatic competition as well as the Waldo Salt Screen writing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Living in poverty in a small house in the rural Missouri Ozarks, near the Arkansas border, she has to cook, chop wood and do whatever is necessary to care for her twelve-year old brother Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and her six-year old sister Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson) as well as look after her mother who is catatonic.Based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell and co-written by Granik and Anne Rosellini, The Winter's Bone depicts how young Ree's life is changed when the local sheriff informs her that her dad, Jessup, on the run after being arrested for "cooking" methamphetamines, has put the family's house up as bond and that, unless he is found and convinced to turn himself in, Ree's family will lose their house.
One neighbor tells her that her questioning is, "a real good way to end up et by hogs." When someone asks her, "Ain't you got no men folk to do this?" the answer is an emphatic "no." (at times, the film seems to be challenging Juno for the most quirky one-liners).Ree's main antagonists are her father's terrifying older brother Teardrop, played by John Hawkes, and Merab (Dale Dickey), the wife of Thump Milton, one of the local bosses.
Though it can be hard to watch at times, it is not as some critics have said "poverty porn." There are lighter moments as well that include authentic Ozark folk music sung by Marideth Sisco and scenes of Ree teaching her brother and sister to spell, count, and perhaps more important for survival, how to shoot a rifle.
She also tells her younger brother about the culture in which they live saying "Never ask for what ought to be offered." Though I was riveted by the unfolding story, perhaps because of the film's high degree of stylization, I stopped short of full emotional involvement and was often conscious of the fact that I was watching a movie.
The basic storyline – a teenagers plight to save her dependent family from imminent homelessness because of the actions of an errant and now-absent father – felt both authentic and compelling, as did the way the local community closed in around her, meting out both violence and support in equal measure.Using grey and oppressive colour tones, the entire film is shot in a bleak wooded landscape, where the grizzle-bearded men all look like they've just left the set of 'Southern Comfort', and the straggle-haired, world-weary lined faces of the women add to the unspoken sense of the harsh reality of life here.
At its' heart, it's a good story, well-told, with excellent central performances (particularly John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence) and an open-hearted sense of the local community here, in spite of their bread-line existence.
Then there are the themes that rage quietly behind the scenes: hopelessness in poverty, good transcending almost demonic evil, an unbridled feminist treatise, nobility free poverty, drug culture ripping social fabric asunder, and family is your trump card for everything.This really grasps you like a whirling dervish in a cauldron, so powerful it takes your thoughts so many places so quickly.The source of all this is a startling story and screen rendering by one who may become a great young female director.
The performances, likely coaxed by this great director, stun you silent.Plus it contains possibly the greatest role model for the young ever put on film, performed in true star making brilliance if seen beyond the art houses where characters like me reside.In the end, after five viewings, it stands as my favorite film seen since American Beauty, therefore placing it in my favorite ten all-time.
This film tells the sad story of inbred, poverty-stricken, Missouri Ozark hillbillies trying to scratch out a living on poor soil and even worse personal resources, so it was no wonder meth production was embraced as a life-changing profit center that had the illegal potential to change their lives for the better.
What great harm it did was shown and acted brilliantly, as it pushed these already at-risk people lower down the chain of life than before and surely even lower than the wild animals they had to kill for food.A young girl of 17, seeming older than her years, beaten up and beaten down, wary of those around her but needing their help, and with 2 young siblings and a helpless mother to care for, she learned that her drug-making, drugged-out father disappeared and missed a court date for a drug arrest, and the most important task of her life then became finding her father before they lost their meager home to bondsmen, as that sorry home place was all they had in the world but it was home and she intended with all her heart and soul to do whatever it took to keep it and her family together.
I watch few newer films and when I do it is something like 'Winters bone', an original, stark and realistic film shot on location in the Missouri Ozarks.Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 17 year old who is raising her two younger siblings in the absence of her father, and the debilitating mental illness of her mother.
At first I thought she may look a little too clean for the part, her skin too clear, but she quickly grew on me in what is a fully convincing performance.Winter's bone is much more than the story, this is deeply rooted in the location depicted, and people who love location photography and the lay of the land, a part of America that hasn't changed much in 100 years, will appreciate the visual aspects of this film.
I love unique settings like this, a nice piece of Americana full of local flavor and I think the filmmakers understood this well as several of the actors were Ozark mountain locals and they add to the ardent realism of the film.What also shines through is the hope, the hope and strength of this incredible 17 year old woman who faces challenges that contemporary women, for all their talk of "having it all" (career, family.
Unfortunately in Winter's Bone the incompetent director Debra Granik together with her miserably mundane cast headed by Jennifer Lawrence (a wooden heroine), John Hawkes (a drab evil uncle) and Valerie Richards (a loathsome Texan stereotype) have neglected to put any life, heart of poignancy into the material.
And first off, there's a reason the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, it's because the film is astounding.The film features newcomer Jennifer Lawrence in the role of young Ree, a 17 year old girl raising her young brother, and sister, and caring for her sick mother.
A film about life in the backwoods of the Missouri Ozark mountains, filmed on location and with local residents supplying many of the bit parts; principal characters Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), her uncle, Teardrop (John Hawkes), and Merab (Dale Dickey), etc., are filled by experienced actors.
It's a very gripping journey and gives a view of that particular type of rural life and culture which, perhaps slightly broadly drawn, is fairly realistic in its picture of that wintry land and its people.Some reviewers are already projecting "Winter's Bone" as best picture of the year and/or Jennifer Lawrence as Academy Award winner as best actress; her performance is that brilliant and gripping.
I was propelled through it almost as if riding a roller coaster.It was only after the movie was over and reflecting about it that I wondered why Missouri's social services network was never mentioned, made no appearance**--and how in the world could Ree become such a strong, determined character given her father, mother, and circumstances?
The odds are stacked against them in so many ways, so writing a bad review of a low budget movie feels a little like criticizing David for not knocking out Goliath sooner.BUT.The cinematography, script, pacing, acting all meshed together in one long dull, clichéd mess.
Those are all positive attributes to have, but there are so many independent movies that are very effectively well made on a low budget with an actual story and characters, that comparatively, "Winter's Bone" is one of the worst films of the year, not one of the best..
So she embarks on a dangerous mission to find her father, risking her life several times just to save her house and keep her family together.The story and plot is good; it's captured well thanks to some great cinematography, after a while you really become engulfed by the nature of the film.
"Winter's Bone" is the little movie of 2010 that does just that - it takes over your senses because what is happening on the screen is unabashedly and uncommonly real and not-Hollywood like that you become immersed in this rarely- explored world of the Ozarks.Using a novel by Daniel Woodrell, director Debra Granik and co- screenwriter Anna Rosellini crafts a stark tale about a teenage Ozark girl who is forced to find her missing father before she and her two siblings get thrown out into the wild, due to dad putting up the house as a bond for his bail.
Kudos also to other supporting actors, especially John Hawkes as Ree's uncle Teardrop, who delivers a guilt-ridden, burnt-out depiction of a nearly lost soul.The Ozark landscape in the movie is beautiful to watch, but it emits a haunting, bleak presence.
In a wilderness and poor area of the Ozarks, the seventeen year-old Rhee Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) raises her younger siblings Sonny (Isaiah Stone) and Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson) respectively and takes care of her catatonic mother alone, since her father Jessup Dolly is absent in prison.
The director certainly did her job choosing a good cast and the writers thankfully didn't opt to throw it every Appalachian stereotype in the book.Meanwhile, as the movie was busy doing such a great job of engrossing the audience with settings and authentic feeling characters, it was failing on film's most basic level — possessing a compelling plot.
That being said, this film is a well-acted, well-written film that deserves the Grand Jury prize it received at Sundance.This film is about a 17-year-old girl named Ree who cares for her younger siblings and her depressed mother in the absence of her father, a meth cook.
Winter's Bone is the critically acclaimed story of a 17-year old girl (Ree Dolly--Jennifer Lawrence) in the Ozark mountains who is thrust into the role of family provider when her father becomes a meth cooker and her mom loses her mind.
Ree sets out on a quest to find her dad and convince him to go to court, and the resulting story is old-fashioned film noir taken to the meth belt.Most people like this movie because of the wonderful acting by Jennifer Lawrence and the excellent evocation of its unusual setting.
I immediately wonder what folks in the Ozarks actually think of the film, since I do not know the area well myself.For all that, however, I think the film is powerful primarily because of the relationship between the actress, Jennifer Lawrence, and her character, Ree Dolly.
They tend to be low-budget, gritty docudramas, about poor people living in near-squalid conditions, with minimal plot, and people who are "just like some people I know." Now, I'm certainly no fan of what has been coming out of the studios as of late, and yet I thought the other 9 Best Picture nominees in this year's Oscars, were all extremely well done.But if you're looking to get some attention at Sundance, I'd say it might be a good idea to start making a low-budget film about a Rwandan refugee who struggles to to bring his family to America by selling trinkets on the sidewalks of New York, while living above a ratty bodega somewhere in the Bronx.
My stubborn inclination, despite the potent, pea-soup atmosphere of dilapidated shacks and leering, shadowy characters, is to dismiss it all as 'almost great.' The story is kick-started by a strong, simple premise—That 17 year old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) must track down her father who, having put the family house up for a bail bond, must be retuned by his court date—Which quickly escalates into an engrossing high- stakes mystery when she starts asking questions of the wrong (or is it right?) people.And yet the experience receded promptly in my mind.
The response: provide either your father or proof of his death or you lose the house in about a week.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ There aren't too many events in Winter's Bone that could be described as twists or surprises as the story unfolds gradually and deliberately.The film would likely have been still solid with other actors as Ree, but Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in a pretty dark and thankless role.
I liked both of those films and thought them both excellent, but it is the unenviable situation that Ree faces and the actions she takes to protect her family – all fueled by the performance of Jennifer Lawrence – that make Winter's Bone a better film than the other two.Final Rating – 8.5 / 10.
¨Never ask for what oughta be offered.¨ Winter's Bone is director's Debra Granik's only film that I have had a chance to watch (she also directed Down to the Bone, so I guess she must have something for bones), and I was really expecting much more from this picture considering it won the Grand Jury Award at Sundance and it has recently been nominated for four Oscar awards (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence, and Best Supporting Actor for John Hawkes) with which I only agree with the two acting nods.
There is a real authenticity and reality to the film, and poverty is depicted in a very natural manner, but at the same time the movie moves along at a very sluggish pace.The story takes place in the Ozark Mountains, a very poor Southern rural area where all the locals seem to be involved with illegal drugs (cooking and consuming crystal meth to be more precise).
The problem is that there seems to be a code of silence between the people in the Ozarks and no one is willing to break it.Winter's Bone is not actually a mystery film, the main focus of the movie isn't really trying to find out where Ree's father is or what happened to him, the issue Granik is really trying to get at is portraying a real and authentic environment involving poverty and responsibilities a teenager shouldn't have to carry at such an early age.
The performance given by the central character is excellent as Jennifer Lawrence shines.Set in rural Missouri a 17 year old named Ree Dolly(Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself having a tough time making ends meet for her family as she's raising her younger brother and sister.
But then the movie began to slowly unfold, and I realized that what's most alien about the environment is the culture, and when it comes to that, I felt like I was watching a movie about people from another planet.Ree is a 17-year-old girl struggling to provide for her two younger siblings in the literal absence of her father and the figurative one of her mother, a nearly catatonic basket case who's checked out on life.
After the disappearance of her father who has been dealing with illegal drug activities, 17-year-old Ree Dolly who lives in the Ozark Mountains has to take on the role as head of the family and look after her sick mother and two younger siblings.
You leave this film with the impression of a really distinct and little-known culture (outside America at least).The plot has the feel of a quest as the Ree Dolly - a shining performance by Jennifer Lawrence - goes from person to person trying to find her no-good father.
This movie tells a story of 17-year old girl who must find her drug-dealing father to prevent losing her home and keep her brothers and mother together.
I was unable to divert my eyes from the screen.Part of that can be attributed to the lead actor in this film: Jennifer Lawrence, as "Ree." She plays a strong character, a tough 17-year-old girl with big responsibilities, trying to take care of two little kids and near comatose mother.
Winter's Bone set place in the Ozarks where 17 year old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) lives with her two younger siblings and her catatonic mother.
This caused Ree to look for him to save their family and through her journey, she encounters her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and countless other people who spells conspiracy towards Ree and her father.Now I have never heard of the Ozarks before or what it's like but in this film, it's shown with characters portrayed as rednecks whom they are close to each other yet dangerous.