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Winter's Bone
Feb. 3rd, 2011 11:00 pmI love Winter's Bone. I saw it over Christmas and saw it again a couple weeks ago when they had a free showing in the cinema, and I just love it.
The cinematography is wonderful. It's unsparing, telling an ugly story in a grim world, yet the quality of the light imbues it with a stark grace. Occasionally the camera happens on a lovely scene - a road through the forest in late afternoon, Ree running on the catwalk over the cattle pens - and the world is for a few moments almost unbearably beautiful.
The filmmakers are admirably restrained. Some of the scenes are damn rough, but they are never gratuitous: every shot is necessary to tell the story, but there are no extra shots wallowing the grime.
About the story. The first time through I had trouble following what Ree was doing, and even after the second I wouldn't like to give a plot summary. But the great genius of the film is that this doesn't matter. I couldn't follow the twists and turns, but I knew Ree's ultimate goal and I knew enough to know whether she was making any headway and I knew, most of all, why this mattered so much to her.
And, of course, I love, love, love Ree. She's so tough and she tries so hard, and her burdens are too much - not just for a seventeen-year-old, but for anyone; and yet she keeps going, because she has to.
In short, the movie is almost flawless. I loved it so much that I scuttled off to the library to get the book it's based on, Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone.
Woodrell's book, though accomplished, is not flawless; or at least, is not as much to my taste as the movie.
Its greatest strength is its prose. Woodrell's prose is spare and precise, so succinct as to be hard to read, yet beautiful. His prose gives his novel the same stark grace that the cinematography gives the film.
But there's nevertheless a pervading scuzziness to the book, like a film of dirt adhering to its surface. There's a lot of dirt in the book, a lot of non-metaphorical shit, and a pervasive air of vaguely exploitative sexuality. Ree jokes with a bus driver taking her into town that he's just doing it to get into her panties. Ree's best friend Gail got in a family way after a one-night stand and is stuck married to a loser. The only sexual relationship in the book that doesn't feel vaguely scuzzy is Ree's romance/affair/thing with Gail.
The Ree/Gail thing got cut from the movie, which probably should bother me. But I felt in the book that it existed as an opportunity for the reader to ogle - an impression which is reinforced by other such opportunities, particularly the scene where Ree spends a night naked in a cave which has no bearing on the story. (This also got cut from the film.)
So I can take or leave the book. But the movie based on it is excellent and very much worth seeing.
The cinematography is wonderful. It's unsparing, telling an ugly story in a grim world, yet the quality of the light imbues it with a stark grace. Occasionally the camera happens on a lovely scene - a road through the forest in late afternoon, Ree running on the catwalk over the cattle pens - and the world is for a few moments almost unbearably beautiful.
The filmmakers are admirably restrained. Some of the scenes are damn rough, but they are never gratuitous: every shot is necessary to tell the story, but there are no extra shots wallowing the grime.
About the story. The first time through I had trouble following what Ree was doing, and even after the second I wouldn't like to give a plot summary. But the great genius of the film is that this doesn't matter. I couldn't follow the twists and turns, but I knew Ree's ultimate goal and I knew enough to know whether she was making any headway and I knew, most of all, why this mattered so much to her.
And, of course, I love, love, love Ree. She's so tough and she tries so hard, and her burdens are too much - not just for a seventeen-year-old, but for anyone; and yet she keeps going, because she has to.
In short, the movie is almost flawless. I loved it so much that I scuttled off to the library to get the book it's based on, Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone.
Woodrell's book, though accomplished, is not flawless; or at least, is not as much to my taste as the movie.
Its greatest strength is its prose. Woodrell's prose is spare and precise, so succinct as to be hard to read, yet beautiful. His prose gives his novel the same stark grace that the cinematography gives the film.
But there's nevertheless a pervading scuzziness to the book, like a film of dirt adhering to its surface. There's a lot of dirt in the book, a lot of non-metaphorical shit, and a pervasive air of vaguely exploitative sexuality. Ree jokes with a bus driver taking her into town that he's just doing it to get into her panties. Ree's best friend Gail got in a family way after a one-night stand and is stuck married to a loser. The only sexual relationship in the book that doesn't feel vaguely scuzzy is Ree's romance/affair/thing with Gail.
The Ree/Gail thing got cut from the movie, which probably should bother me. But I felt in the book that it existed as an opportunity for the reader to ogle - an impression which is reinforced by other such opportunities, particularly the scene where Ree spends a night naked in a cave which has no bearing on the story. (This also got cut from the film.)
So I can take or leave the book. But the movie based on it is excellent and very much worth seeing.
