Winter's Bone

[Bill Pryor]

Finally, I got arond to seeing this. It's been playing here for about 2 or 3 months and still getting good crowds. It opened the Jubilee festival (now known as the KC Film Fest) in April to rave reviews. There's been some Academy Award nomination buzz going around too. If it does not get nominated, there ain't no justice. Incredible story. Beautifully done. Every performance is first class. Slow paced, bleak as hell, which fits the story, people and the country.

The only not so great thing I can say about it is that after the first 2 or 3 minutes, I leaned over to the person with me and said, "Shot with a Red." "How do you know already?" he asked. "Because it's so damn flat."

Not to knock the Red. I've seen some wonderful footage from that camera, and I thought "Che" was 35mm till I saw the Red credit. But, it shoots very flat, and it takes some really good lighting and exquisite colorizing, apparently, to get away from the too flat look. Even on the nicly lighted interior scenes, it lacked the punch you see from cameras like the Sony F35, 5DMKII, Viper, etc. They wanted a bleak look, especially in all the exterior scenes, and they did a great job in color grading for that. But there's a difference between bleak and flat. Could be that's the way the director wanted it.

Anyway, it does not detract one bit from the story. it was not a big budget film, by good feature film standards, obviously. But putting another 10 million dollars into it would not have made it a bit better. You feel you've been to another world. I've had some limited experiences with people and places in the Ozarks, and from what I've seen and what I've heard about from people who've spent more time than I have in the backwoods, I think the portrayl of life there was exquisitely and painfully accurate. The only actor's name I recognized was the male supporting actor, but everybody, even the kids, were amazingly good. If a British or French filmmaker came to the Ozarks, this was the film they'd make. I think the female filmmaker is American. It's taken from the novel, which now I absolutely must read.

[RonH]

Unfortunately, people see movies like this and read similar reviews and come to accept this portrayal as common to all communities and people of a region. It's not in this case. It's just that there are no great stories going to film that people want to pay for about happy Christian families having Sunday picnics in the rural Missouri south. My authority on this? Well, my wife's great aunt was the first Postmistress of Jane, MO, still a mere wide spot on the road into Arkansas and our delightful relatives still reside in the region; my daughter went to college in Springfield and had many great intelligent and successful friends from the deep hills region (one of whom currently serves the Ambassador to Ireland); and I worked as a police dispatcher with men who served on the major case unit that had to deal with the infamous "Covent, Sword and the Arm of the Lord" incidents around Rolla.

Not to say the kind of folks portrayed aren't there and perhaps even just like this, but that it tends to cause others to unfairly stereotype anyone from the region as being that way. There's ugly people in every part of the Earth, and just as many nice ones.

[Bill Pryor]

I didn't stereotype everybody from the region being that way. The way of life, though, in certain areas down there is very similar to what was portrayed in the film. Same with the backwoods villages in East Texas, which I'm a lot more familiar with. Not everybody, of course not. That would be like saying everybody in Johnson County KS, is a Republican. But it's accurate to say the area is very Republican.