WINTER’S BONE Directed by Debra Granik
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Believe it or not, there are still places in the U.S. that are isolated, inbred, and insular, where poverty and tradition keep people rooted to the land and bound to each other. Debra Granik’s gripping drama Winter’s Bone takes place in the dirt-poor Ozarks, far from the electronic squall of mass culture, and the cloistered setting is so central to the characters’ problems that it almost seems like a character in itself. Adapted from a novel by Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone is the story of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17-year-old girl forced to become the head of her little family; her catatonic mother is incapable of caring for the two younger children, and her father, who cooks crystal meth for a local dealer, has disappeared a week before a scheduled court date. Informed by the local sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) that her father used the family homestead as collateral for his bond, Ree sets out to find him before she and her kin are turned out into the fields.
Addiction is part of the scenery in Winter’s Bone as well: almost everyone in the little mountain community is smoking or snorting or swilling something. When Ree confesses to a neighbor that her father was cooking crank, the woman replies, “They all do now. You don’t even need to say it out loud.” Drugs are so pervasive that offering them has become a common backwoods courtesy, like bringing food to a sick neighbor. After Ree’s uncle, Teardrop (John Hawkes), balks at helping her, his wife presses a joint into her palm and apologetically tells her, “Here’s a doobie for your walk.” Little Arthur, her father’s pal, turns her away completely. “You want a line?” he asks. “You want to blow some smoke?” She doesn’t. “Then I guess we got nothing for you! Go on!”
