Movie: Winter’s Bone
Winter’s Bone is a chillingly atmospheric movie. The threat of violence and the desperation of poverty is everywhere and continuous.
Ree is the movie’s main character, a 17-year-old girl whose father has gone missing. It turns out that after an arrest for cooking meth, he had put his house and land up for bond. Unless he shows for his court date, Ree, her mentally-incapacitated mother, and her two much younger siblings are out in the woods.
Ree sets out from her place of strength, a poor but loving home, into a wild and sinister community set in the rural American mountains somewhere. At each homestead, she asks after her father and the creepy and guarded interactions practically scream conspiracy.
Being an outsider though, I didn’t know what to think for a long, long time.
Winter’s Bone is a different kind of detective mystery. It invokes Veronica Mars for me, but unlike Veronica Mars, where the teenage sleuth faces a closed-off conspiracy of wealth in the blaring California sun, Winters Bone‘s teenage heroine must negotiate the dark backwoods equivalent.
It is a detective story. It is a hero’s quest. It is a story about family and strength. And all of it could have gone very, very wrong. The characters could have become stereotypical, the hero overly melodramatic. But it didn’t. I suppose that’s why I don’t make films. Because I have no idea how they saved it all and actually made this good.
If I Picked the Oscars 2011 (in order of my vote)
Best Picture:
- True Grit
- Black Swan
- Toy Story 3
- Inception
- Winter’s Bone
- The Social Network
- 127 Hours
- The Fighter
- The King’s Speech
- The Kids Are All Right
Best Actress: