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Winter's Bone

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Winter's Bone
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDebra Granik
Written byDebra Granik
Anne Rosellini
Produced byAnne Rosellini
Alix Madigan
StarringJennifer Lawrence
John Hawkes
Lauren Sweetser
Garret Dillahunt
Dale Dickey
Shelley Waggener
CinematographyMichael McDonough
Edited byAffonso Gonçalves
Music byDickon Hinchliffe
Release dates
  • January 21, 2010 (2010-01-21) (Sundance)
  • June 11, 2010 (2010-06-11) (United States)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2 million
Box office$12,466,317 [1]

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 impacted 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 was nominated for 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, she makes sure they are fed, dressed, and bound for school, whilst teaching them basic survival skills (e.g. hunting and cooking.) The family is very poor - as an incident where the family dog is fed with stale food demonstrates (one of several incidents where someone is thrown a "bone"). Her father, Jessup, a meth-cooker, hasn't been home for a long time and his whereabouts are unknown.

The local sheriff shows up and tells Ree that Jessup is due to be in court in a week and cannot be found; because her father has put their house and property up as collateral for his bail, if he doesn't show up for his trial, they will lose it all. Ree goes to her best friend Gail, whom she has not seen in a while, to convince her husband to lend them his truck as transportation; however, he refuses. Determined to find her father dead or alive, Ree travels by foot to her father's distant relatives and associates, including her father's brother Teardrop (John Hawkes), an old friend of her father's named Little Arthur, and the region's patriarch, Thump Milton (Ronnie Hall). She has small successes with the women but catastrophic defeats with the men - everywhere she goes the ultimate message is the same: stay out of it or get hurt. Even her father's brother Teardrop grabs her by the throat to tell her to not poke around, and she is warned to never return after Thump refuses to see her.

Desperate, Ree pushes on, including seeing through an attempt to make her believe her father was killed at a blown up meth lab, teaching her siblings how to shoot and skin squirrels, and visiting the home of a woman who recounts that her father was hanging out with three unknown associates. When a bailbondsman visits to inform Ree that in a week she will lose the house, she once again tries to speak to Thump Milton. Because in a previous visit she had been warned not to return, Ree is brutally beaten by three women of the clan. Upon returning to consciousness, it is revealed to Ree they have already discussed killing her but are unsure of what to do with her. When Thump and the rest of the clan show up, Ree remains defiant but pleads her case: she is responsible for her sick mother and 2 young siblings, and if her father is not found dead or alive, the bond will be forfeited, and her family will be forced "out into the fields like dogs." Luckily, just then, Teardrop shows up to rescue her; he confronts Thump and the rest of the Milton clan, and assures them that he means them no harm and will take responsibility for his niece and any further actions by her. Thump is satisfied that Teardrop will not cause any problems and that he understands that whatever happened between the Milton clan and Jessup was business, and lets Teardrop take Ree and be on their way.

On the way home, Teardrop tells Ree that if she ever finds out who killed her father, not to tell him because then he would have to do something about it and end up "toes up" as well. Ree sees no further options that would enable her to either keep the house or keep the family together, so she attempts to join the military after seeing recruiting posters offering a $40,000 signing bonus for 5 years of service. But when the recruiter tells her she will not be able to care for her family while in basic training or deployed to a foreign country, she changes her mind. Teardrop wakes up Ree one night after a change of heart to help her poke around, including visiting a bar (which ends with him smashing a windshield), looking for freshly buried dirt at a cemetery, and the night ends after a tense standoff when the Sheriff backs down after having pulled Teardrop over.

One night, the same three Milton women who beat Ree come to her house. They offer to take her to see "her father's bones." Their offer to help her requires revealing little much else about her father so that no new "rumours" will be told about them. The women blindfold Ree so that she will not know where she is going. They drive her to a pond, get into a rowboat, and row to the shallow submerged place where her father's body lies. They insist Ree reach into the water and grasp her father's hands. They expect her to pull the arms taut, so that, using a chainsaw, they can cut them off the corpse. When Ree presents the hands it will finally prove to the authorities that her father is dead. Ree agonizes, but complies. After one hand has been severed, Ree balks and fails to firmly grasp her father's deteriorating remaining arm. The chainsaw-toting Merab admonishs her, explaining that in the past law authorities have been fooled by fugitives before, and that only by the submitting of both hands will the authorities be placated from their pursuit. Agonizingly, Ree helps with the removal of her father's other hand.

After Ree delivers the severed hands to the sheriff after telling him they were flung onto their porch, she and her family are able to keep their home. The bailbondsman once again returns and also delivers an unexpected boon - a large sum of cash that had been part of the bond was not claimed by an anonymous Jessup associate.

The movie ends with Teardrop visiting Ree Dolly and giving Sonny and Ashlee a baby chicken each to raise. After trying to play Jessup's banjo, he tells Ree that he knows who killed his brother. Ree wants to give the banjo to Teardrop, but Teardrop says that she should keep it for him, and then abruptly leaves. Ree's brother Sonny asks Ree if she plans on leaving them, to which she responds she would never leave them. Ree's little sister picks up the banjo and attempts to play it.

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 commented 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, you know."[2]

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."[2]

Granik comments 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 on-screen 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."[2]

Response

Critics

Winter's Bone received widespread critical acclaim. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 148 reviews, for an average score of 8.3/10.[3] Among Rotten Tomatoes' "Top Critics", which consists of notable critics from the top newspapers and websites,[4] the film also holds an overall approval rating of 94%, based on a sample of 31 reviews.[5] The site's consensus is that "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."[5] 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, with the film in the "universal acclaim" category.[6] Reviewer Peter Travers found the film "unforgettable", stating "Granik handles this volatile, borderline horrific material with unblinking ferocity and feeling" and "In Lawrence, Granik has found just the right young actress to inhabit Ree. Her performance is more than acting, it's a gathering storm."[7] 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."[8] David Edelstein stated "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."[9] New Yorker critic David Denby called Winter's Bone "one of the great feminist works in film." [10]

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).[11] 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.[11] According to the distributor company, "the filmmakers had always wanted to deliver the movie to the people who helped them make it."[11] The film, as of March 2011, has grossed domestically in the United States more than $6.5 million in cinema ticket sales and nearly $2.2 million internationally,[1] thus more than recouping its $2 million production cost.

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.[12] 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.[13]

The film won Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance at the 2010 Gotham Awards.[14] It has earned seven nominations at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b "Winter's Bone (2010)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved March 22, 2011.
  2. ^ a b c Moraitis, Andrew (November 10, 2010). "Down To The Bone". News Hit. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
  3. ^ "Winter's Bone (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved February 22, 2011.
  4. ^ "Rotten Tomatoes FAQ: What is Cream of the Crop". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
  5. ^ a b "Winter's Bone (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 22, 2010.
  6. ^ "Winter's Bone". Metacritic. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  7. ^ Travers, Peter (June 3, 2010). "Winter's Bone". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  8. ^ Berardinelli, James. "Winter's Bone". reelviews.net. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
  9. ^ Edelstein, David (June 6, 2010). "Ozark Gothic". New York Magazine. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  10. ^ Denby, David (2010-07-05). "Thrills and Chills". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2011-02-01.
  11. ^ a b c "Winter’s Bone Heats Up in the Heartland" Wall Street Journal, 27 June 2010
  12. ^ Zeitchik, Steven (January 31, 2010). "'Winter's Bone' wins grand jury prize for drama at Sundance". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
  13. ^ "Winners 2010 - Stockholms filmfestival". stockholmfilmfestival.se. Stockholm International Film Festival. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
  14. ^ Ryzik, Melena (November 29, 2010). "'Winter's Bone' Dominates at Gothams". New York Times. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
  15. ^ Tourtellotte, Bob (November 30, 2010). "'Winter's Bone,' 'Kids' come up big at Spirit Awards". Reuters. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
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