Winter's Bone (2010)

So I finally got around to watching Debra Granik's fabulous country-noir Winter's bone. OK, the story might contain some overwrought elements but maybe the blame can be put on the book on which the film is based. Winter's Bone has a rare, and raw, vitality I would like to see more in movies: a sort of attention to landscapes and how people are formed by these landscapes. At its best, Granik's style and sensitivity can be compared to the Swedish film Äta sova dö, directed by Gabriela Pichler. They are both interested in edgy characters who strive to make ends meet and who are forced to respond immediately to urgent situations, and they both tackle the material without sentimentality and a beautiful sort of stern optimism. What is more, both Pichler and Granik have the cinematic ingenuity to establish their worlds instantaneously, no need for boring batches of information or flashbacks. This attests to directors who show forceful trust in their material, a rare and necessary trust. I think this is expressed in both film's engagement in the locations of their story; the location is not a mere backdrop, not mere tapestry.

Lots have been said about the music in Winter's bone and I can only agree: country and folk music (by Dickon Hinchcliffe), but also metal, is used to great effect here. The bleak yet evocative cinematography by Michael McDonough is also key to the result, a stunning film that kept me in a steady grip from the first frame to the last. American indie movies should stop being about smart and neurotic people in New York - more indie films should be like Winter's bone. The leading character is Ree, who has to deal with some unnerving types in order to protect her poverty-stricken family. She is on the mission of hunting down her absent father, who is known to be a member of a gang cooking crystal meth. Ree is all determination: she lives in a place and in a situation where she simply must not be afraid of anything. Somehow, the danger and violence of this film actually ended up feeling real, conjuring up a sense of real vulnerability (especially as the danger the characters face are tied up with poverty, economic motives for joining the army, fucked-up kinship relations and so on). I must say Granik does a good job as she prevents the film from becoming a teer-jerker, a Dickensian tale of poverty in the Ozark mountains. Instead, she keeps close to the people that populates the story and any moment of their doings on-screen feels important.