Winter's Bone is a stellar film, an intensely bleak mystery set amongst toothless Missourian meth-heads and abandoned trailer homes. The story is based on Daniel Woodrell's novel of the same name and stars Jennifer Lawrence in what must rank as the performance of the year. She is never short of brilliant throughout. The story follows dirt-poor 17-year-old Ree Dolly (played with quiet desperation and defiant pride by the aforementioned Lawrence) and her search for her meth-cooking daddy Jessup. Seems old Jessup missed a court date and has left his family in a bind. He used the family homestead to cover his bail and it's about to be turned over to the friendly neighbourhood bail-bonding folks. Left in charge of her two young siblings and nearly-catatonic, batshit-kooky mother, Ree has no choice but track down dear old dad to keep a roof over their heads. The search for Jessup leads Ree from one bad-ass Ozark outlaw to another, each a little bit creepier than the last.
The subculture of this region is simply unimaginable and to catch a glimpse inside it is a real eye-opener. It makes the east end look like Paris (the nice part of Paris, that is). Donna had no idea what to make of any of it. It was simply too foreign a world for her to get her head around. I had rather the opposite reaction to Winter's Bone. I kinda dug the anarchy and weird social order that sprang from this godforsaken place. I mean I'm not going to fry up squirrel for dinner anytime soon (depending, that is, on how fucking long this Roncesvalles construction lasts), but I must admit that the Lord of the Flies pecking order in Winter's Bone seemed about right. The film itself is just about perfect.
A top-5 ranked movie for me this year.
Sporgey
1 comment:
This flick is definitely the most under the radar film of the year. It deserves a huge audience and an Oscar nod for the screenplay. One of my top five for certain.
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