I should amend this just a bit, as there was one scene that didn’t ring true: the one where everyone is sitting around playing bluegrass and singing old mountain ballads. That struck me as cliched, and something not likely to happen in real life in an impoverished mountain community. These days, old mountain ballads are more the province of the educated and nostalgic than the poor. But I guess everybody expects to see some banjo music and ballads in a movie about mountain people.
(Also, that was happening at the grimmest birthday party I have ever seen. That’s one spot where some comic relief might have been more appropriate.)
But really those are minor gripes. Overall, I loved the movie. Gave it an 8 over at IMDb.
As for “Winter’s Bone” I kind of figured it had a double meaning, including a lewd one.
What’s funny is that the director said the same thing at the Q&A I attended. She said she thought that people sitting around making music was a cliche, but then she went over to Marideth Sisco’s house and that’s exactly what they were doing, sitting around playing and singing. No one was expecting her, so it wasn’t a set up. Marideth is the singer in that scene, who also sings the song at the beginning of the movie.
You, apparently, never hung around the right people.
Seriously, am I the only one who saw and knew who Sheryl Lee was?
Well yeah, but that doesn’t disprove my point. Let’s face it, Marideth Sisco ain’t exactly poor white trash. She is part of the educated and nostalgic set I was talking about.
I promise you the crankhead set is not sitting around strumming on banjos.
And those weren’t crankhead characters. They were musicians and folks. Not mentioned in the movie, but in the book, Sheryl Lee’s character is a teacher. Are you under the impression that there are no musicians in southern Missouri? Or that there are, but they never sit around and play music with each other? I don’t get what you’re getting at. I’ve been at people’s houses where they sit around and play music.
I know who she is ( and I actually think she was best playing Astrid Kirchherr in Backbeat ), but I didn’t recognize her, just like I didn’t recognize John Hawkes at the time ( I did recognize Dillahunt ). My friend had to mention “Laura Palmer” being in the movie for me to suddenly key on who it must have been.
These people are in hill country. Over the air TV reception there is terrible. Many can’t afford satellite and the cable company has never run a line into the area. Playing music is free. We’re talking about characters who are hunting squirrels for food, because a squirrel only costs whatever you spent on ammo to shoot it.
I have a friend who lives in rural Brown County Indiana in a log cabin. His father was a concrete man and fur trapper. His dad gave him a cheap guitar and he started a band with his brother. When his brother quit the band, his cousin joined. This band is becoming successful, but they started from seriously rural roots. Not everyone who plays music went to school to learn how to do so. Some learn from family members and play with family members. And, it seems to me, the further you get from large population centers, the more likely this is to be true.
One of the great (and very accurate) touches in the movie was that even the poorest house still had a Dish Network satellite dish sitting outside.
There was no allusion at all in the movie to Sheryl Lee’s character being a teacher. So you are bringing information to that scene most people don’t have. When I see the scene, I just see an extension of the same crankhead, poverty-ridden family.
Now while poverty-ridden crankheads might well sit around playing music, I’ve never known any of them who were into bluegrass or mountain ballads. That tends to be an interest of the educated middle class. (The scene with the death metal blasting at Ree’s friend’s house was more true to what I see among the crankhead set.)
Sheryl Lee’s character being a teacher might have changed my perspective on the scene, had I known that. Then she and her immediate family would fall more into the category of people who tend to be interested in old mountain ballads, in my experience.
Yeah, the house with the old-style big satellite dish WAS a crankhead’s house. It belonged to “Little Arthur” who used to pal around with Jessup.
Even before I read the book, I never thought that was a crankhead’s house, and certainly not “poverty-ridden.” They just looked like regular folks to me. The Sheryl Lee character used to date Jessup, and Ree went to see her to find out if she had seen Jessup. There was no indication whatsoever that she and her family were crankheads or had anything at all to do with the crankhead scene (also edit to add that it was mentioned in the movie that the Lee character was a sober alcoholic). I got that in my first viewing, and I didn’t read the book until I’d seen the movie 3 times already.
Edit to add, Tamerlane, I thought Lee was great in Backbeat too.
Well since you ask, yes I do. As I said upthread, I grew up in a rural, crank-in-a-trailer part of the country. (Appalachia, rather than the Ozarks, but I gather the scene is similar. And I still return there regularly on business and to visit family.) And yes, I know quite a few rural crankheads. They’re just people where I come from. Just got off the phone with one of them a few minutes ago. How many do you know? How many meth labs have you seen?
Well I wouldn’t call them preconceptions. More like postconceptions.
I haven’t read the book and grew up in the middle class Philadelphia suburbs, so I’m pretty ignorant about life in the Ozarks and what it’s like to grow up in meth country, BUT I liked the scene with the musicians because the impression it gave me was one of solace and respite when everything and everyone else in the movie was dangerous on some level. To me it said that there was a chance for Ree to find or make a circle of family and friends away from the bleakness and hostility of everyone else she was connected to, and I thought her bringing out her father’s banjo at the end was a nod to that. Like here was a key to the door, here was a symbol of her bringing music (i.e., warmth and beauty) back into her and her family’s life.
We finally got around to seeing the film yesterday.
Great film!
Pretty much agree with Equipoise that this could be a big Oscar contender, although I hope more people see it! (It is closing at our theater today…)
One side note: I expected to be the only one in the audience, but even at the 1:15 PM showing, on a Wednesday, in a small theater complex, there were probably 20 people there!
Perhaps word-of-mouth is working!
If you haven’t seen it yet, go soon - might not be in movie theaters much longer, at least in the smaller markets.
It’s still playing in Philadelphia, over a month after I posted about having seen it, so there must be a healthy audience for it.
I recently read the book, and I have to say, I preferred the movie.
I went with an artsy friend of mine who liked the film a lot more than I did. It was not so much that I didn’t like it as I was not over-the-moon about it as he (and apparently everyone here) is. My friend told me that it haunted him for days while I had almost forgotten that I saw it until I saw this thread. I am trying to remember why I was unimpressed but now, a month later, I can barely remember much about it.
Still haven’t caught it (so haven’t really read the thread), but I hope to this weekend or next week. It sounds like something my wife would like so I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to see it with her–hopefully soon.
OK, with just one day left in the theaters, I finally saw it and it easily catapulted itself to my favorite film of the year. Truly wonderful (though I intentionally made sure I knew next to nothing going in).
I think the Oscar predictions are mostly Wishful Thinking, though–not because it doesn’t deserve it, but because this wasn’t the Little Indie That Could that Oscar usually becomes infatuated with. A great film, it might find a Screenplay or Actress nod (especially if the latter category is as slim pickings as usual every year), but that’s about it.
But still, couldn’t possibly recommend it highly enough. I’m just sorry my wife missed it (since her kin come from that part of the US, with some still living out there).
Actually, being from the area in which this is set (well, a bit farther north and central in MO, but still a short drive away), I can assure you that this sort of thing does indeed go on fairly routinely. I know many people, from all walks of life, living in this area who will have porch sessions fairly frequently. In fact, on any given summer weekend, I can walk out my front door to see the guy across the street jamming with friends, performing anything from bluegrass to gospel to folk songs.
