Winter's Bone - Debra Granik (2010)

The label "indie" makes me itchy. Particularly because it's a pretentious one to push up products as if it was a quality warranty. This film is full of that. It is.. okay. It's not a great film, it's not terribly bad. I think it got promotion just from the labels "independent", "sundance", "oscar"... 

It is done in a austere way. The cast is very natural (the girl is very good, that has to be said). The screenplay's... okay. Previsible? Maybe. It might be "indie" but it still has a "happy ending". What's very interesting about it is the way of showing yet another side of rural America. 

It's often said that David Lynch is the bad side of the American dream. This can be related to that in the sense that the countryside in America is  often portrayed as honourable, healthy, even naïve. This film shows that not everyone is like that, that the "real America" can also be sick and rotten. Drug addicts aren't just in urban areas and there are people in America that have to rely on hunting squirrels so they can have something to eat. I think that's the best I can rescue from this film. It tries to be a rough story that criticises something about society... with an upbeat ending.

I still have The Rain People in mind - or it has me, I don't know. Austere, simple, human film... yet superior in so many ways.

Winter's Bone