Winter's Bone

There ain't much to country living. Sweat, piss, jizz and blood.

             - Warren Zevon, Play it All Night Long

Crank should probably be added to that list.

My first introduction to poor white trash (and its continuous obsession with me) began at the tender age of eighteen when I was unwillingly dragged to a trailer park for drinks somewhere outside a waste-management facility posing as a town named Slidell, Louisiana. The double-wide we visited belonged to the stepfather of a high school buddy of my roommate at LSU; a good sort of person - if brains, tact, humor and maturity don't count. He was bright enough to understand, however, that these types of coon-ass excursions he insisted on for the weekends made me uncomfortable and terribly paranoid. Being a proud member of the Sons of the Confederacy, it was a state he always relished seeing my northeastern ass in.

This particular evening I was treated to a card game, poker to be specific, with four other Rebs: the aforementioned stepfather, my roommate's pal, a growling malcontent named "Cody" and my roommate. After a few hours of drinking, heavy smoking, gambling, picking shreds of cold roast beef off a duck hunting themed platter and overcoming a significant language barrier (their dialect was slightly more coherent than that of a Faulknerian idiot man-child), I had reached my breaking point. The entire conversation for the evening had never veered away from either "the niggers", pussy, guns, prison, jokes about pussy and niggers, booze, hunting, fishing or how much their jobs sucked. I could relate to pussy and booze. I even enjoy the occasional ethnic joke. But this was a bit much. Especially when my roommate's friend felt "Cody" was a card cheat and pulled the family shotgun down off the wall.

My roommate and I left soon after that. It was there, in his Mazda 280z (his family was from Shell Oil money), that he told me "Cody" had been released from Angola only days before after serving five years for stabbing a guy with a pair of scissors SEVENTY-EIGHT FUCKING TIMES.

I kept mostly to my dorm room and the local Baton Rouge bars after that on weekends. I still bear the psychic scars.

I mention this character building snapshot of my troubled youth because it was the first flash of memory I had as I began watching Debra Granik's sophomore effort Winter's Bone. And it reminded me that wherever you are in this nation - the rural, poor and ignorant have a colloquial oneness. Along with a fear and dislike of the educated. The nuances from area to area are negligible.

Which is why Winter's Bone, a movie that nails that essence, is of such integrity and efficiency in storytelling it should be a required study in filmmaking courses nationwide.

I know I'm waxing nostalgic here, but films like this seemed as plentiful as weed back in the '70s. Gritty, hard-hitting character studies set in strange yet simple locales and peopled with authentic extras, rawboned freaks of nature having major roles in the production. In reflection, it was a film lover's dream era and even though a large number of the movies made on the fringes of Hollywood back then have not aged so well, it would be a dishonor to not admire the balls of the mavericks who went out and did them. Winter's Bone is ballsy like that and one of the few American films in recent memory (Frozen River and Wendy & Lucy come to mind) that captures that spirit and plight of the poverty stricken Caucasian.

As a critic, I see dozens of films per year that deal with the disenfranchised and poor; from urban dramas about impoverished African-Americans, the struggle of immigrants in our country, war-torn refugees, Chinese sorghum farmers, cross-dressing, kite-flying Arabs, gay Filipino cabana boys, child gang members in Rio, whores from Chiapas - you name it, I've seen it. But it is the rare film that deals with destitute white folk here in the U.S. of A.

And, quite frankly, fuck them. They tend to vote Republican if they vote at all, but it doesn't mean their existence doesn't make for some fascinating subject matter. Who else will speak up for those with a fourth grade education, long hair, bad teeth, an obligation to denim, truck payments and picnics based on grudge, Jello-molds, doilies and incestuous rape?

Winter's Bone gets at it. Deep at it.

Somewhere in the Ozarks of Missouri, a seventeen-year-old girl named Ree (a stunning, career-making performance from Jennifer Lawrence) takes care of her two young siblings and catatonic mother in a shitty house in the middle of the woods. Her oft absent daddy is the local crank cooker and is on the lam after being bailed on the latest drug charge. Problem for Ree is, he put the family home and timber up for bond and if he doesn't show for his court date, the state takes it all - leaving her, the children and mom homeless in the cold, Missouri winter.

Ree begins an odyssey to locate her father in order to preserve the humble (very humble) homestead. She runs across kin of all kind (everyone is apparently related within a fifty mile radius), who are mostly cold and dismissive to her on account of her daddy being, well, no account. Many have their own secrets and interests to hide as they've been in cahoots with her father. The law is an outsider round these parts and people don't take kindly to snitches - or young girls poking about their business. There's a code in these woods and mountains. That oh so recognizable horseshit, self-defeating pride of the downtrodden which vaguely resembles chivalry but always has its roots in selfishness, pigheadedness and desire for violence. Ree understands it, honors it when she can, and skirts it when she needs to protect those closest to her.

The strength of the film is in its honesty (source novelist Daniel Woodrell is from Springfield, Missouri). The dialogue is astonishingly realistic (think Deadwood without the stylized eloquence), the performances are harsh and bare (John  Hawkes' "Teardrop" is particularly menacing) and the story never falls into cliché or condescension. The red herrings (not indigenous to the region anyway) are kept out of the river for this one. It's linear, mean, and single of purpose. American. In and out.

Just like the hard-edged Missouri folks it captures.

And with that, my motorcar trip to Branson has been officially postponed.

Comments

[jjmitch21]

Great movie!