Winter's Bone- Best Movie I've Seen This Year

This film, one hour forty minutes long, is so engrossing that it feels as if it is so much longer, but in such a good way.  When it’s done, you emerge from the Missouri Ozarks having been transported there and wishing you could just get inside that film and be Ree Dolly’s protector.  I have watched it twice.  The first time was so mesmerizing that I didn’t want to pull myself out at all.  The second time I made notes so I could actually write this review.  To me, this is the best movie I have seen this year.  It has knocked Inception off the block.  And I love Christopher Nolan’s work.  But this had it all.  Story, first and foremost.  Acting.  Acting so wonderful you forget it is acting.  It looks like a documentary, almost.  Costumes.  Cinematography.  Casting.  The casting- it is so well done that, well, see my sentence about almost a documentary.  It was filmed on location in Missouri and that has added the realism to it.  And to bring it all together, the music, used sparingly, is divine.  It starts with a haunting a cappella song “Way Down in Missouri”  lullaby.  In another scene about halfway through the movie, Ree Dolly, a 17 year-old young woman, the center of the story who has had to grow up so much faster in an area where everyone grows up fast, enters a home.  In the living room, there is a woman singing and she is accompanied by a banjo, guitar and fiddle.  It’s a birthday party for someone, there are men playing poker at a kitchen table.  I just want to go in and sit down and listen to the music for the rest of the night.  “Oh excuse me, don’t mind me, I’ll just sit in this corner here.  I don’t want to be in the way.”  Do you think anyone would notice if I just climbed into the movie?  It reminded me of the first time I saw/heard “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”.   Debra Granik, the director has done a wonderful job of putting together all the elements and produced a very fine film indeed.  The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival.

But, Jane, you say.  What is the movie about?  Oh, it’s about a 17 year old girl/woman, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in the Ozarks who has to take care of her family as her mother, Connie (Valerie Richards) is basically catatonic, her father is one of the best meth cooks around (more in a moment) and her brother Sonny (Isaiah Stone) is 12 and her sister Ashlee (Ashlee Thompson) is 6.  Dad, one of the best meth cooks around, had been arrested for just that very thing and to make bail, he put up the house and land (great 100 year old trees, just aching to be cut down).  Of course, the minute he made bail, he high-tailed it and hasn’t been seen by his family since.  Then the sheriff shows up looking from him.  He explains to Ree what will happen if good ole Dad doesn’t show up next week for his court date.  Of course, nobody had any idea that the house and land were part of the bond deal.  Ree says she’ll find him and sets out to do so.  However, everybody in the general area is somehow involved in the meth trade.  And everybody around is somehow related, one way or another.  The first person that Ree goes to is her uncle Teardrop (played magnificently by John Hawkes).  He refuses to help her.  There is so much at stake in this community.  No one wants to talk to anyone.  There is a Code of Silence.  One never knows who to trust.  And Ree is an unknown factor.  But Ree eventually homes in on the people who have the information she needs.  At this point, I would go further, but it be spoiling this excellent movie for you.  And that I will not do.  If you see one movie I recommend this year, see this one.  It is available on DVD now.  It is a gem of a movie.