Amazingly insightful, scarily realistic portrait of a rural, white-trash, hillbilly Ozark community devastated by methamphetamine, cruelty, betrayal, suspicion and despair. But the film isn't about despair, but about the most basic and elementary kind of courage - the kind a 17-year-old girl must have to face an unforgiving world where her mother is mentally unstable, her younger siblings need food, and her father has just skipped bail (putting their house as collateral). She will either find him, dead or alive, or face eviction. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in the lead role and the film won the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.
October 10, 2010
Winter's Bone (2010) ****
Amazingly insightful, scarily realistic portrait of a rural, white-trash, hillbilly Ozark community devastated by methamphetamine, cruelty, betrayal, suspicion and despair. But the film isn't about despair, but about the most basic and elementary kind of courage - the kind a 17-year-old girl must have to face an unforgiving world where her mother is mentally unstable, her younger siblings need food, and her father has just skipped bail (putting their house as collateral). She will either find him, dead or alive, or face eviction. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in the lead role and the film won the top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.
