Winter’s Bone

July 5th, 2010

So I saw this movie today.

Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.

Based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell.

I don’t know that I enjoyed it, quite. It was really interesting to watch. The story was mundane and scary at the same time. It felt more like watching a documentary than a movie. Not in a voice-over narrative way, just in that the things in the frame were so… normal. They were so everyday. There was no Hollywood there, nothing was pretty or freshened up or clean. But at the same time the dirt and the mess and the cheap, falling-down ugliness of it all was not overdone. It just… was. My thought while watching it was that 100 years from now, if someone wants an accurate picture of this slice of Ozark life, then this will be the film to view. Or an accurate picture of what the heck people in America actually look like. What they wear and what their hair looks like and what they do. People with no money for highlights who can’t afford to buy whatever they want, even at Wal-mart. This was a movie about those people. And I think it more accurately reflects modern American life than a million rom-coms sets in Manhattan where people with no jobs live in giant apartments. This is a place where the front yards are littered with dogs on chains, and empty bottles of Mountain Dew. Where no one’s clothes match, and they’re just there to keep the elements out. Where people are fat and wrinkled and scarred and grimy.

I recommend it highly, not because it will make you feel either sad or happy, or that it will transport you to another place, like wonderful movies do. Just because it was such an odd feeling to see something so real up on the screen.

Housekeeping note: an old lady sat NEXT TO ME at the theater. NEXT TO ME. NO seat in between as buffer. How many laws does this violate? Naturally I got up and moved. What the hell, old lady?