THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
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WINTER’S BONE
Young star gives life to a raw tale
by Ann Hornaday
“Winter’s Bone” is a tough movie to love. Adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s nov- el, the movie limns the impoverished backwoods culture of the Ozark Moun- tains in southern Missouri, a landscape of drug labs, rural detritus and foreclosed hopes. As this absorbing, relentlessly austere
film opens, 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is trying to keep her fragile household together, taking care of her younger brother and sister as well as her invalid mother. Her father, Jessup, has been away for weeks when a sheriff arrives to tell her that he was arrested for cooking meth and has put the family’s house up as bond. He’s due in court, and if Ree can’t find him, she’ll lose her home and her family will be torn apart. Thus ensues a grim, digressive chase through the hollers and hellholes inhab- ited by Ree’s neighbors, most of whom are her extended relations and most of whom appear to some degree tweaked on meth, touched in the head or toothless. Co- written and directed by Debra Granik, “Winter’s Bone” teeters uncomfortably be- tween patronizing its hard-bitten charac- ters and romanticizing their folkways, from the gorgeous musical interludes that punctuate the film to their terse rhetorical
SEBASTIAN MLYNARSKI Jennifer Lawrence gives a standout performance as a teen trying to keep her family together in “Winter’s Bone.”
flourishes (“Never ask for what ought to be offered,” Ree tells her little brother). As the starkly unvarnished tale of a young woman’s mythic journey through tribulation and poverty, “Winter’s Bone” has been understandably compared to similarly downbeat recent movies. But the story’s unrelenting cruelties, culminating in a gothically grisly climactic scene, make such films as “Frozen River” and “Pre-
cious” look like “Dinner at Eight.” What makes “Winter’s Bone” endurable, and what saves it from being an elitist if earnest version of “authentic” Americana, is its lead actress. The 19-year-old Law- rence delivers an astonishingly sympa- thetic and assured performance as a young woman whose character is revealed not through inspirational speeches but through pure, unhurried action and deter-
mined focus. “Winter’s Bone” may be tough to love, but through sheer, unstud- ied force and haunting power, Lawrence makes it worth the emotional investment.
hornadaya@washpost.com
R. At area theaters. Contains drug material, profanity and violence. 100 minutes.
BB½
THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE
An Inuit tale goes south
by Dan Kois A well-acted but dreary drama of clash-
ing cultures, the Canadian film “The Ne- cessities of Life” is a vivid example of the difference between a worthwhile film and an essential one. It addresses a difficult episode in Canada’s history: the mid-cen- tury tuberculosis epidemic in the country’s far north that led to countless Inuit fami- lies being broken up, as patients were sent to sanatoriums across southern Canada. Sensitively written and handsomely filmed, the movie follows Tiivii, an Inuk from Baffin Island, as he’s separated from his family and brought to a hospital in Quebec City, where his is the only dark face among the TB sufferers of Room 245. It’s a story worth telling, but you’d be right to wonder if it’s a story worth watch- ing. And for the first half of “The Necessi- ties of Life,” the answer, alas, is no. Not un- less you enjoy watching people who don’t speak the same language stare at each oth- er, or love listening to the sound of a dozen
IFC FILMS
Louise Marleau and Natar Ungalaaq in “The Necessities of Life,” a thoughtful but unengaging story of an Inuit man brought to a TB sanatorium in white Canada.
guys coughing. None of his French-speaking wardmates understand Tiivii (played by the Inuit actor Natar Ungalaaq), and the only reason they don’t laugh at him more is that laughing tends to make them hack and wheeze. (It is 1952, so the cigarettes many of them smoke don’t really help.) Tiivii spends his days drawing pictures of caribou and his nights dreaming of snow and, occasionally, trying to escape. As Tiivii’s health fails, Carole, a kindly
nurse (Éveline Gélinas), introduces him to a young patient, Kaki, who has also been taken from the north. His budding pater- nal relationship with Kaki, who’s torn be- tween the ways of the white world and the ways of his home, invigorates Tiivii — and, to some extent, the film. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine what audience might find “The Necessities of Life” essential viewing. Even viewers who are specifically fascinated by Canada’s In- uit peoples will likely come away dis-
appointed by the film, which makes Tiivii a generic fish out of water for much of its length. Better to rent 2001’s “The Fast Run- ner” (“Atanarjuat”), which also starred Un- galaaq — and has higher stakes, a more ex- citing story, and glorious shots of the end- less northern vistas of which “The Necessities of Life,” stuck in a Quebec hos- pital, only gives a glimpse. None of this is to say that “Necessities” is a bad movie. It’s thoughtful and, especially at its end, quite touching. But that can’t make up for its pedestrian direction (by Benoît Pilon) or its lack of originality. Of course, Tiivii and the other patients on his ward eventually bond. There is sadness, and tragedy, and even a touch of comedy when Tiivii applies the straightforward courtship practices of the Inuk to nurse Carole. But there are precious few surpris- es. Tiivii’s journey is a daunting one, but “The Necessities of Life” doesn’t offer enough incentive for moviegoers to accom- pany him.
weekend@washpost.com Kois is a freelance reviewer.
Unrated. At the Avalon. Contains one subtitled vulgarity and extremely violent coughing. In French and Inuktitut with English subtitles. 102 minutes.
B½
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