While there were some good movies nominated for Best Picture, as I wrote in one of the Oscars threads this has been the film from 2010 that has stuck with me the most. If not my favorite movie of the last 3-4 years, Winter’s Bone was certainly my favorite from last year.
This is definitely one of those movies for which your perception will depend on what you bring to it. As has been noted, and like every movie made, it’s not for everyone. It is a slow-paced film (the comparison to The Straight Story certainly works in that respect), and the ending isn’t particularly fulfilling.
I grew up in a very small town (not in the Ozarks); for better and for worse, the screenplay and performances in Winter’s Bone took me back there.
I loved it. I thought the main character (Ree) was refreshingly different from most protagonists.
There was no lesson for Ree to learn. There was no sub-plot where she finds the courage to do what she has to do. Ree looks for her father because she simply has no other choice.
The one detail that movies about poor people leave out is the complete lack of options available for their problems. This movie not only leaves that detail in, but it uses it to drive home the severity of the problem Ree was facing.
Ree is boxed in from the beginning of the film. She only has one path in life and the movie shows how she walks through it. It’s heartbreaking and inspirational all at once.
Furthermore, look at the desperate things that Ree had to do in the period just before the start of the film. She had to drop out of high school even though she was pretty smart (or at least that’s what’s implied) and might actually do well in college. This was because she was the only one available to stay home and take care of her mentally ill mother and her young brother and sister. There was no job paying even moderately well in the area for her, and even if there was, taking it would mean that she would be away from home while she was working.
Talking to the military recruiter was a real act of desperation, and Ree probably knew it. As a 17-year-old high school drop-out, there was no way that the recruiter could give her any hope that she could enlist when she turned 18. According to one of my nephews, who is a Marine who’s done a tour as a recruiter, the military won’t even take people with GED’s, let alone high school drop-outs. If you have a GED rather than a high school diploma, the military will tell you that you have to do at least one term in college and get good grades before they can consider letting you enlist. To be eligible to enlist, Ree would either have to return to high school and graduate or take the GED exam and then take some college courses. Either way would take her away from home and she can’t do that.