Winter’s Bone

Directed by Debra Granik

(R)

****

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“Every so often a film gets under our skin with its haunting authenticity,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. The quietly devastating Winter’s Bone is one of those films. This adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel is at once a family drama, a thriller, and an “ethnographic portrait of a place, time, and people.” Director and co-writer Debra Granik “delves with fascinating specificity” into rural Missouri to tell the story of Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), a poor yet proud 17-year-old struggling to keep her family intact. Winter’s Bone “pulls incredibly powerful drama out of a grim, hard corner of rural America,” said David Edelstein in New York. Ree’s father, who was arrested for cooking crystal meth, has jumped bail, having promised their house as collateral. It’s up to her to find him. Creating a “lyrical tension between determination and despair,” Granik delivers the year’s “most stirring” film. She owes much to the actress who plays her brave heroine, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Lawrence, just 20 herself, achieves “a state of grace that combines intelligence with fierce resolve,” giving Winter’s Bone both humanity and “heart-stopping urgency.”