Winter's Bone (2010)

[randy_byers]

Thanks to ron_drummond, who gave me the DVD for Christmas, I was able to watch Winter's Bone a second time yesterday. Based on a single viewing in the theater, it was one of my three favorite movies of 2010, and it very much held up the second time around.

A couple of years ago it seemed as though there were a bunch of Alice-in-Wonderland-inflected movies about young girls visiting fantasy worlds -- Tideland, Pan's Labyrinth, Coraline, and MirrorMask are what I remember -- and last year it seemed that there was a burst of movies about older girls who have lost their fathers and have to take charge of their lives before it's really their time. Winter's Bone is one, along with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and True Grit.

There are aspects of Winter's Bone that remind me of my own father's life, actually. He grew up on a dirt-poor farm in Oregon hill country, and the scene where Ree goes to the cattle auction reminds me of a time my dad took me to one when I was a kid. I've seen those guys sitting in the bleachers in their John Deere caps and flannel shirts and down vests. The view of family in the film seems very familiar too, except that Ree experiences a much more dysfunctional version of extended family loyalty than I ever have. Still, family comes through in the end in the form of her meth-addict uncle, Teardrop, who is a fascinatingly ambivalent character. But the most powerful aspect of the movie is the depiction of strong women, even when they are being strong for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways. Merab and her sisters, who punish Ree for asking too many questions and then give her the answers she needs to solve her problems, are the most interesting characters -- and the most interesting faces -- in the movie.



The Coen Bros. True Grit has got me reading Charles Portis novels, but I think I need to read some by another Arkansas writer too. Daniel Woodrell wrote the novel that this movie is based on, although I might first try Woe to Live On -- the source of Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil -- which I think I've already mentioned has an oblique connection to True Grit.

Comments

[janetl.livejournal.com]

That's the first time I've heard The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo described as "older girls who have lost their fathers and have to take charge of their lives." ;^)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe it's a stretch. In Winter's Bone and the Millennium stories, the father is a problem, but in True Grit he's just dead. But what's also interesting is that all three stories have damaged/incapable mothers in them. The daughters have to fend for themselves in a brutal world.

[(Anonymous)]

When I see a still, especially from a film I haven't seen, one thing I do is focus on the actors rather than the characters. I look at the woman on the right and wonder whether she looks anything remotely like that in her non-work life, and whether she ever flashes that glower spontaneously. (I'd probably think the same thing about the woman on the left if she was in focus...)

[(Anonymous)]

Oops -- that was me.

- Denys

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, the woman on the left is actually the more major character, Merab, that I mentioned in my post. Her face is amazing. She's played by Dale Dickey, and I don't know that I've seen anything else she's in (although she's been on a number of TV episodes that I could have seen, including Bones), but it amuses me to no end that another movie she's been in is called Trailer Park of Terror. No stereotyping there!