Winter’s Bone, Women Alone

‘Winter’s Bone’ (Debra Granik, 2010) follows Ree, a 17 year old girl who’s looking after her two younger siblings as her mother is unresponsive and her father has disappeared. Ree tries to find the remains of her suspected dead father so that their house isn’t taken away from them.

My overall take on this film is that I found it pretty dull and uninteresting. This film has a very slow pace, which isn’t necessary a negative in itself (both ‘Blade Runner’ films are very slow paced and yet are some of my favourite films of all time), but my problem is that the plot itself isn’t really very interesting at all. It never really feels like the plot is progressing in an engaging way, with the characters themselves also feeling very flat in their traits. Each character basically boils down to one or two ideas that make up their personalities, which gets very stale when those traits are so generic.

The film is shot very nicely, but the colour of the film is very bland to look at. I thought everyone gave a good performance but the plot of the film never really allowed for characters to show any real range of emotion. This isn’t a film that I think is poorly made in any capacity, but it just doesn’t grab me in the way that I feel that it should, which is the films biggest flaw.

‘Winter’s Bone’ as a feminist film

This film is considered to be a feminist film based on its themes and ideology that it presents, heavily to do with how women are presented throughout the film.

The main point to make is that this film features a strong female lead, Ree. Ree is someone who takes a very active role in solving her own problems. She is shown to take a very mature role in her household, essentially taking care of her two younger siblings. She is also shown to be very capable in looking after herself and her family, as she teaches her siblings how to hunt and cook. Furthermore, this means that Ree is often seen doing tasks that are stereotypically done by men.

One of the major themes of the film is that the men are the ones who cause issues, but the women are the ones who have to fix those problems left by the men. This is most evident through Ree’s dad, who by living a life of crime has caused Ree to have to find a way to make sure that they can keep their house.