winter's bone

There has been a lot of buzz about the Sundance Film winner, The Winter's Bone.  Now that I've seen it, I see why.  It's a beautifully written story about a 17 year old girl living in the poor part of the Ozarks.  Ree's father, a meth manufacturer, is about to skip out on his bail.  Unfortunately, he used the homestead as collateral for his bail bondsman.  With a depressed mother who is no help at home and two young siblings she is determined to enter her dad's dark and trashy world to try to find him and make him show up to his court date.  We meet her extended family and her father's "associates" as she searches and discovers finding her father might be hard, because he might not be dead.  Ree is played by Jennifer Lawrence who is certain to get an Oscar Best Actress nomination.  Her character is both stubborn beyond her safety, and yet also timid and cautious.  She wants to know where her dad is, and knows that she could get hurt digging into his whereabouts.  For such a young and little experienced actress I was very impressed.  The rest of the cast of characters are all quite minor, but each powerful in their own way.  The movie was filmed in the Missouri Ozarks and shows a beautiful backdrop for the seedy place they live.  The people there are not particularly humane, they are almost animals just fighting for their own survival, not caring what they have to resign to to do it.  Debra Granik is a new writer and director, having only 2 other pictures to her credit according to IMDb.  After watching this, I want to see if I can track down the other two.  She definitely has high potential as an artist.  I predict a Oscar Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay nomination in the future.