Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Debra Granik
Produced by	Anne Rosellini Alix Madigan
Written by	Debra Granik Anne Rosellini
Based on	The novel by Daniel Woodrell
Starring	Jennifer Lawrence John Hawkes Lauren Sweetser Garret Dillahunt Dale Dickey Shelley Waggener
Music by	Dickon Hinchliffe
Cinematography	Michael McDonough
Editing by	Affonso Gonçalves
Release date(s)	January 21, 2010 (2010-01-21) (Sundance) June 11, 2010 (2010-06-11) (United States)
Running time	100 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2 million
Box office	$12,466,317

Winter's Bone is a 2010 American independent drama film, an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel of the same name. The film was written and directed by Debra Granik and stars Jennifer Lawrence. It explores the interrelated themes of close and distant family ties, the power and speed of gossip, patriarchy, self-sufficiency, and rural poverty in the Ozarks as they are changed by the pervasive underworld of illegal methamphetamine labs. The film won a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic Film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It received four 2011 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.

Plot

Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), 17, looks after her catatonic mother; her brother, Sonny (12); and her sister, Ashlee (6). Every day, Ree makes sure her siblings eat, all the while teaching them basic survival skills like hunting and cooking. The family is very poor. Ree's father, Jessup, hasn't been home for a long time and his whereabouts are unknown. He is out on bail following an arrest for cooking meth.

The sheriff tells Ree that if her father doesn't show up for his court date, they will lose the house because it was put up as part of his bond. Ree sets out to find her father, following his trail into a world where meth use is common, violence is frequent, women are scared of their men, and people are bound by codes of loyalty and secrecy. She starts with her meth-addicted uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and continues on to more distant kin, eventually trying to talk to the local crime boss, Thump Milton. Thump refuses to even see her; the only information Ree comes up with are warnings to leave the situation alone, and stories that Jessup died in a meth lab fire or skipped town to avoid the trial.

When Jessup fails to show for the trial, the bondsman comes looking for him and tells Ree that she will have about a week before the house and land are seized. Ree tells him that Jessup must be dead, because "Dollys don't run." He tells her that she will need to provide proof that her father is dead in order to avoid the bond being forfeited. Ree tries to go to see Thump again and is severely beaten by his women, since it would be improper for a man to hurt her. Teardrop shows up and rescues Ree, promising her attackers that she won't say anything or cause any more trouble. Teardrop tells Ree that her father was killed because he was going to inform on other meth cookers, but he does not know who killed Jessup, and warns her that if she ever finds out who did that she mustn't tell him because it could get him killed.

Teardrop decides to stir things up by confronting Thump's men and smashing their windshield. When the sheriff pulls Teardrop and Ree over after the altercation, Teardrop accuses him of telling Thump that Jessup was going to inform. When he shows the sheriff his rifle, the sheriff holsters his gun and lets them drive away.

A few nights later, the same three Milton women who beat Ree come to her house. They offer to take her to see "her daddy's bones." The women blindfold Ree and drive her to a pond, where they get into a rowboat and row to the shallow place where her father's submerged body lies. They tell Ree to reach into the water and grasp her father's hands so they can cut them off with a chainsaw; the severed, decaying arms will serve as proof of death for the authorities.

Ree takes the hands to the sheriff, telling him that someone flung them onto the porch of her house. The sheriff is concerned that she will tell others about the traffic stop, which would make him look weak. She assures him that she has no interest in talking about him to anyone.

Teardrop brings two baby chicks for Sonny and Ashlee to raise. The bondsman comes back to the house and gives Ree the cash portion of the bond, which was put up by an anonymous associate of Jessup. Ree tries to give Jessup's banjo to Teardrop, but he tells her to keep it at the house for him. As he's leaving, he tells her that he now knows who killed her father. Ree reassures Sonny and Ashlee that she won't ever leave them, regardless of the money she just received. As the film closes, Ashlee retrieves Jessup's banjo and begins to play.

Cast

• Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly
• John Hawkes as Teardrop Dolly
• Lauren Sweetser as Gail
• Garret Dillahunt as Sheriff Baskin
• Dale Dickey as Merab
• Shelley Waggener as Sonya
• Kevin Breznahan as Little Arthur
• Ashlee Thompson as Ashlee Dolly
• Tate Taylor as Satterfield
• Sheryl Lee as April
• Cody Shiloh Brown as Floyd
• Isaiah Stone as Sonny Dolly

Production

After the release of Debra Granik's first film Down to the Bone, Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini were looking for another project. Granik and Rosellini informed author Daniel Woodrell of their interest in his yet-unpublished material. They later said that he was receptive to their interest based on their previous work. "He had seen our previous film, which let him know how we work, and the scrappy type of filmmaking that we do, which would be low budget. He had a very distinct reference and he let us know that he liked that film, which also had the word ‘bone’ in it. And when he gave us that confidence, he knew what we were about, so the expectations were appropriate".

Granik also commented that the subject matter of meth and its impact upon the Ozarks region were troubling for both cast and crew. "I think that the subject of meth for everybody involved – for local people and the crew – it was extremely upsetting. There is not one aspect of looking at meth that is mellow or benign: what it does to a human being’s body, their faces, their teeth. Everything about it is so vicious, and so dramatic and so relentless. There is basically not one bit of solace in that whole depiction of actual reality of it."

Granik said that the filmmakers gave Lawrence "obstacles" to create a more authentic and detailed performance: "I think that Jennifer Lawrence was given these very real settings in which to function and very real obstacles. She really had to run the hill. She really had to wrangle her onscreen brother and sister in certain things. She did have logs and different kinds of animals to contend with. And the fact that she had these real-life tasks I think we started to feel confident that everything the actress was doing would have a rigor to it and you would sense that she was not just breathing through experiences."

According to the end credits, it was filmed entirely on location in Christian County, Missouri, and Taney County, Missouri.

Response

Critics

Winter's Bone received widespread critical acclaim. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 157 reviews, for an average score of 8.3/10. Among Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics", the film also holds an overall approval rating of 94%, based on a sample of 31 reviews. The site's "consensus" reads, "Bleak, haunting, and yet still somehow hopeful, Winter's Bone is writer-director Debra Granik's best work yet—and it boasts an incredible, starmaking performance from Jennifer Lawrence." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 1–100 reviews from film critics, reports a rating score of 90 based on 35 reviews, placing the film in Metacritic's "universal acclaim" category. Reviewer Peter Travers found the film "unforgettable", writing in Rolling Stone, "Granik handles this volatile, borderline horrific material with unblinking ferocity and feeling.... In Lawrence, Granik has found just the right young actress to inhabit Ree. Her performance is more than acting, it's a gathering storm." Web-based critic James Berardinelli said that "Winter's Bone is a welcome reminder that thrillers don't have to be loud and boisterous to grab the attention and keep it captive." David Edelstein wrote in New York magazine, "For all the horror, it’s the drive toward life, not the decay, that lingers in the mind. As a modern heroine, Ree Dolly has no peer, and Winter’s Bone is the year’s most stirring film." New Yorker critic David Denby called Winter's Bone "one of the great feminist works in film." The A. V. Club put the film at #1 on their list of the best movies of the year.

Audience

Winter's Bone debuted in cinemas in mid-June 2010, with its opening weekend generating "a hearty" $84,797 on four screens; the movie’s subsequent outing and expansion to 39 total venues yielded sales of $351,317 (for a per-theater average of $9,008). The film's distributors Roadside Attractions aimed, concurrently with New York, Los Angeles and Boston, at "heartland cities" such as Minneapolis, Overland Park, St. Louis, Springfield, Dallas and Denver, which eventually all attracted significant audiences, surpassing New York's. According to the distributor, "the filmmakers had always wanted to deliver the movie to the people who helped them make it." As of March 2011, the film had grossed over $6.5 million in cinema ticket sales in the U.S. and nearly $2.2 million internationally.

Awards

Further information: List of accolades received by Winter's Bone

The film won the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic Film and the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It also received two awards at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival in Germany. At the 2010 Stockholm International Film Festival, it won the awards for Best Film, Best Actress (Lawrence) and the Fipresci Prize.

The film won Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance at the 2010 Gotham Awards. It earned seven nominations at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress.

External links

• Official website
• Winter's Bone at AllRovi
• Winter's Bone at Box Office Mojo
• Winter's Bone at the Internet Movie Database
• Winter's Bone at Rotten Tomatoes
• Interview with John Hawkes ("Teardrop") at Quietearth.us
• Moon, Michael and Colin Talley. "Life in a Shatter Zone: Debra Granik's Film Winter's Bone." Southern Spaces, December 6, 2010.