This is the type of film that absorbs you into its world, not through bang wow CGI, but through an undeniable authenticity.
Not that I have any first-hand knowledge of the rural poverty depicted here. How many indie moviegoers do? How many of the judges who awarded it the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance jetted home to a meth-ravaged Ozarks town? That's not how art works. I wasn't at Guernica, Dresden, or, despite rumor, Folsom. And I thankfully don't need to travel back in time to appreciate the art inspired by those events and places.
Good art should seep into a person and settle into all those little emotional cracks we have in our psyche. Winter's Bone is good art. It doesn't hit you over the head with liberal guilt or stroke you with hollow conservative apathy. When I said it was authentic I meant that it's just the story it is with no cheap theatrics or embarrassing grasps at, gag, a message. It's not the best film I've seen this year, though it is one of the most memorable. It's too small to worry about the baggage of greatness. It was made to tell a specific story and it achieved that. (That story, btw, is about a teenage girl struggling to raise her two younger siblings who has to find her bail-jumping father in order not to lose the house and land he put up as collateral. No, it's not a comedy.)
Star Jennifer Lawrence, however, is about to get big. She has earned a Golden Globe nomination and will hopefully follow that with an Oscar nod. I don't think she can get enough praise for her performance. I was surprised to read that she's going to be Mystique in the new X-Men movie, but then I saw her here and understood. While Lawrence carries the film, I need to mention another terrific turn by an unusually menacing John Hawkes (Deadwood, Eastbound & Down) as her uncle.
Bonus: there's an unintentional easter egg for Twin Peaks fans: an almost unrecognizable Sheryl Lee. You're all getting older, aren't you?
