Blu-ray Review: Winter's Bone (2010)

Winter's Bone is the sort of film that deserves to benefit from the Academy's decision to enlarge the field of Best Pictures.* As a low-key independent effort, it could easily have been overlooked come awards time, but instead it earned its place as one of the ten shortlisted; an impressive achievement for a film with a meagre budget, no stars and a hard-to-categorise tone. Winter's Bone has been called 'Hick Noir' - it's set in rural mountainous Missouri, one of the poorest regions in the US, and its investigative plot bears certain hallmarks of the classic detective style. However, its comprehensive rejection of melodrama and absence of a specific visual style places it more in the vein of naturalism than that most cinematic of genres.

Perhaps because the film shuns overt stylisation or narrative propulsion, it can be hard to warm to. The setting is Grim with a capital G; heroine Ree (the hot-right-now Jennifer Lawrence, who is superb) inhabits a horrible world where all the adults are chronic crystal meth abusers, and the code of silence surpasses any blood ties. 17-year-old Ree has to look after her younger brother and sister, as well as her practically comatose (through drug use) mother, in an environment only a notch or two above squalor. She's forced to plunge into the closed-off world of her neighbours (and, often, relatives) to search for her absconded father, but no-one's willing to talk. Her sheer dogged persistence, though, makes for a gripping watch, the viewer finding themselves willing her on in her Odyssean quest through blasted, leafless, overcast landscapes.

The pacing is extremely slow and the lack of narrative movement does initially test one's patience. (It sums up Ree's existence, a constant downward spiral from which there appears no escape.) But when Ree does start making some headway it becomes impossible to turn away. The central mystery, the whereabouts of her father, drives the narrative effectively, leading to a memorable, can't-look denouement. Director Debra Granik's handling of the oppressive atmosphere in the later stages makes for an intense watch, and the release of the end is both a relief and a catharsis. Possibly not a film that you'd rush back to watch a second time, Winter's Bone is nevertheless powerful and engrossing. Just don't expect feel-good.

*Incidentally, the number has changed again - it's not fixed at ten any more; rather, it's between five and ten depending on how many films cross a certain votes threshold.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: B / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 / Distributor: Artificial Eye

Presentation
Winter's Bone's stark palette of mostly blues and browns dampens the 'wow' factor but the transfer here is technically sound, boasting very good detailing and clarity. It has the expected grainless look of a film shot with the ever more popular digital Red One camera, with few of its sometimes associated shortcomings (like waxiness and aliasing - see The Book of Eli). For some reason the disc has two English 5.1 tracks, one in DVD-quality 448 kbps Dolby Digital, and the second in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. The disc puzzlingly defaults to the former, but clearly the DTS-HD is vastly superior. The track itself is subdued and quiet - I had to turn the sound up further than normal - but faithful, with limited use of the surrounds to enhance the windswept ambience.

Extras
The Making Of runs over 40 minutes and is in a fly-on-the-wall style, which gives an honest and unvarnished inside look but lacks much of a structure. The deleted scenes mainly comprise a sequence where Ree camps in a cave, which would only have slowed down an already methodically paced film unnecessarily, and an alternate opening consisting of Ree's family videos. Finally, there's a sort of music montage set to shots of the Missouri wilderness.



Summary
Tough going and gripping, Winter's Bone is the antithesis of a popcorn movie. Probably not one to revisit but well worth a rental for the open minded. (Note: I would give it 3.5 stars if I could.)