Debra Granik’s Ozarks mystery is tense, closely observed and anchored by Jennifer Lawrence. Ree can seem too consistently admirable, but the performances and patient attention to place make this a film we recommend warmly.
Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone is a tense, persuasive mystery that deserves attention even from those usually put off by such unrelieved hardship. Ree Dolly’s search for her missing father takes her through an impoverished Ozarks community where family loyalty makes asking questions dangerous. Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini adapt Daniel Woodrell’s novel with a useful sense of proportion: the search matters, but so does the business of living among these people. The danger feels convincing because we have time to consider what speaking freely might cost them.
Jennifer Lawrence makes Ree’s determination believable without making it look easy. Her performance is alert and controlled, with little sense that she is asking for applause. We felt anxious simply watching her listen. The concentration in her face suggests someone who cannot afford to misunderstand what another person means. Lawrence lets us see the effort involved in staying composed, even when the writing gives Ree too few opportunities to be anything other than resourceful.
John Hawkes gives her someone difficult to read as Teardrop, Ree’s uncle. He makes a frightening figure without allowing the threat to explain everything about the man, and Lawrence has to remain attentive around him. Their scenes together loosen the film’s tendency to place Ree’s resolve at the centre of every exchange. The supporting performances help make the community feel inhabited by people with their own reasons for being wary, each with concerns that extend beyond the heroine’s search.
Michael McDonough’s photography gives us the worn buildings and harsh rural surroundings without making them picturesque. Mark White’s production design takes a similarly practical approach: the dilapidation registers without making every glimpse of a building an invitation to inspect the damage. These are places in which people have to live, and the film keeps that fact in view. The attention paid to local language helps, too; people sound as though they are speaking to each other without needing to explain their community to us.
Affonso Gonçalves’s editing keeps the search comprehensible while leaving time to register the caution in an exchange. Dickon Hinchliffe’s score is effective without softening the film’s account of hardship, while the mountain music gives the place a life beyond the investigation. The music is welcome in a film where so much human contact is strained. Granik’s restraint around violence is especially valuable: the threat remains close, but she does not keep displaying suffering to prove how harsh these lives are.
The difficulty is that Granik and Rosellini sometimes make Ree’s decency too dependable. Her determination remains impressive, but there are stretches when another test tells us little we have not already learned about her. The repetition matters because the film offers so little lightness elsewhere, and the grimness can begin to feel dutiful. Lawrence prevents Ree from becoming merely exemplary, though we wanted the screenplay to allow her the untidiness it grants the people around her.
As a rural thriller, it understands how much fear can come from needing an answer that nobody wants to give. Its attention to speech and daily habits keeps that fear close to ordinary life, even as the mystery grows more pressing. The 101-minute running time is well judged, despite the stretches in which Ree’s persistence has already made its point. Give it an evening when nobody is going to talk over the quiet exchanges.
