A Star is Born... in the Ozarks
Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 11:31PM 
Ten years ago this weekend, the public met a new Hollywood star in the making. The movie that brought the world a new silver screen goddess wasn't the sort of big studio production that in the old golden days would've been the logic harbinger of stardom. Quite the contrary, the film in question was a modest indie. Director Debra Granik's Sundance prize-winning critical hit would go on to become a sleeper hit in arthouse release. We're talking, of course, about Winter's Bone and the performer bound for stardom's was future Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence…
Winter's Bone is about a girl searching for her father in the Ozark Mountains. It's also a stark portrait of a community where the bounds of honor that unite criminals are stronger and deeper than blood, and a character study on a young woman deadened by the harshness of her environment.
The future star of The Hunger Games and many a David O. Russell feature was only 19 when the movie hit theaters. Still, despite her youth, her breakout work in this grimy gloomy thriller showed great maturity and subtle canniness, one that avoids obvious shortcuts to dramatic resonance. Jennifer Lawrence is Ree Dolly, a teenager that has had to learn early on how to provide for herself and her younger siblings. Her absent father is an irresponsible criminal who's recently jumped bail while her mother is a pill-addict stuck in what seems to be a perpetual state of catatonic indifference. It's a dire situation all-around but things only get worse when, one sad morning, Ree's household is visited by a local cop who brings alarming news.
It seems that her father, when arrested on charges of drug trafficking, put their house and land up as bail. Then disappeared without a trace, putting the survival of his impoverished family at risk. As is the rule in Ree Dolly's life, it falls upon her to do right all the wrongs and she goes on a depressing odyssey through the Missouri land in search of some errand clue to find her father. Through her journey, she meets many members of her extended family, all of whom greet her with varying degrees of hostility. The whole story is a grueling affair, but nothing shocks this resourceful young woman. Quite the contrary, Lawrence plays Ree as someone so accustomed to hardship that no indignity takes her by surprise.
Well, almost.
Even Ree has limits, though Lawrence and her director are patient about revealing them. Part of Lawrence's accomplishment is how she refuses to make Ree into an extraordinary superwoman. There's a casualness to her way of being in front of the camera, a relaxed ease that helps highlight every instance when Ree is genuinely riled up. When she senses real danger, her presence changes radically. It becomes tense and unnerving, slow and rigid like a caged animal backed into a corner, preparing itself for an impending attack. Still, even then, Lawrence doesn't overstate this young woman's strength, allowing the audience to see where her mask of abrasive posturing ends and fear and vulnerability starts. If we felt Ree was untouchable, her struggles wouldn't hit us as hard.
Ree's struggle is one for survival amongst very dangerous people. It makes sense for this girl to project an image of prickly forcefulness, but it's equally necessary that the audience can see through it. This balancing act is a delicate thing and it's amazing how easy Lawrence makes it all feel. Her naturalism is seamless, perfectly in tune with Granik's camera. In the nighttime climax of Winter's Bone, the director fixes the camera on her leading actress's face, documenting all the gradations of horror she can express and the result is a spectacle of ravaged humanity.
Jennifer Lawrence is an actress whose talent doesn't often lie in the lived-in quality she brings to Winter's Bone. Her greatest assets otherwise tends to be her magnetism and indelible screen presence, something that was visible here early on beneath the layers of grime. Lawrence may never ask for the audience's sympathy, but her charisma conquers it easily nonetheless. All things considered, Lawrence's performance as Ree Dolly continues to have the power to surprise ten years later, after we've become quite familiar with her. Of all her Oscar nominations, this is her best. This only reminds us that Jennifer Lawrence can be a remarkably intelligent performer. Here's hoping she gets more chances to show that side of herself in the future.
Ten years after Winter's Bone hit theaters, do you think it deserved the four Oscar nominations it got?
Reader Comments (29)
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that Jennifer Lawrence's acting talents have all but washed up.
She was terrific in Winter's Bone - and deserved her nomination.
Her win for Silver Linings Playbook was completely undeserved.
All her films post-win have been pure crap. And she was quite often the worst performer in the films.
I'm excited to see Lawrence return to the screen soon!
It may have deserved more than four nominations. Lawrence is great, but John Hawkes might have been even better. Hawkes had a performance that seemed to come out of nowhere. I had seen many of his films and he never looked like an actor that had that type of performance in him. It took him to a new level and the next two years he had other Oscar level performances in Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Sessions, but the Academy passed on those. I would love to see both Lawrence and Hawkes back in the game with some meaty roles.
She totally deserved the nomination, But since then she has made some bad choices, she's a star but she can be a great actress too.
She killed it in Winter's Bone but became unbearable with fame and winning the Oscar (which she didn't deserve) as I think the rawness that she had in Winter's Bone and in The Burning Plain (terrible film but she and Charlize were good in it) is gone.
I disagree with most comments here - while they bookend a sea of “this isn’t for me” performances, her strongest work is in Winter’s Bone and in Mother - surely the latter indicates she still has that raw talent and fire available to draw on for the right film?
Agreed. Mother!, albeit polarized, was an opportunity to show again that raw natural magnetism and talent in primal instinct per JLaw.
I love the fact that Jennifer Lawrence is an oscar winner, but Silver Linning Playbook does not make her any justice as the talent performer she is. Winter's bone, on the other hand, is such an exquisite opportunity to see Miss Lawrence at her best. Undoubtly, she really is a good actress, and I also think she handled her stardom and famous cleverly.
Her problem most of the time is miscasting,she's often too young for the role she's playing so an element of unbelievability feeds in while your watching her but she has the Julia thing going on,she's magic on screen,Winter's Bone role is a more age appropriate role for her and that's why she succeeds more and the points made in the piece,I personally didn't like the film although I liked Hawkes,I would have nominated him.
I think she's a great, magnetic actress. Even her duds, like Passengers, probably looked good on paper? And I can see how she wanted to do something like Red Sparrow because it was good trashy fun. It seems like she's taking a bit of a break now. And her IMDB page seems to say she has some projects that "seem" good on paper - work with Adam MacKay and Paolo Sorrentino. But hopefully she is just more careful about what she chooses in the future?
This is still her best performance. It's just terrific. Love the whole movie, too.
So much vitriol extended her way. It happens to a lot of successful, young actresses. It's too bad.
Totally agree on the miscasting issue. She was about 10 years too young for all her roles in Russell projects and I just couldn't get past that, even though she was actually quite good in Hustle and, especially, Joy – although I thought both movies were kind of a mess... On the other hand, I like SLP best of their collaborations but thought her performance in that was just fine, pretty slight. I think it was Cooper who really did a better job with her lead character. Her winning an Oscar for that, especially in the context of her competition, exemplifies the epitome of the Academy's shiny young starlet fetish.
Co-sign with everyone who said Lawrence was brilliant in Debra Granik's film. I still rate this as her best performance.
Her Ree in Winter's Bone is a vividly drawn character, totally believable, and radiates an incandescence similar to the first time I saw Melissa Leo in Frozen River, Amy Adams in Junebug, or Thomasin McKenzie in Leave No Trace -- to name unforgettable characters in independent films of the last 15 years.
If I were to rank Jennifer Lawrence's film performances where I thought she was solid and effective:
1. Winter's Bone
2. Mother!
3. Like Crazy
She made nary a false move in Silver Linings Playbook but in my mind the late Emmanuelle Riva was more deserving of the Oscar, but obviously majority of the Academy voters thought otherwise. But then again when was the last time an actress I rooted for won the Oscar?
It's a strong performance, but it's hard to get past the fact you have this beautiful, Hollywood-polished woman living in one of the most cartoonishly grotesque redneck milieus in a film striving for down-home authenticity. Seriously, "Winter's Bone" is not good.
"Poverty porn" is an apt phrase here.
For my money Lawrence's best is "mother!" She's also sensational in her three Russell films, especially the hugely underrated "Joy."
Harvey Weinstein, David O. Russell, Darren Aronofsky .. I don't blame her for ambition and getting ahead, but I certainly don't see her coming back at the same level. Maybe at the JLo or Demi Moore level.
She’s incredible in this, and I’m just as excited by John Hawkes and Dale Dickey. Would’ve been nice to see Granik break into that Director lineup. Joy and mother! are my other favorites of Lawrence’s performances, and I hope she has some good work coming in the future. Will be nice to see her once all her franchise obligations are over and done with.
She is remarkable in this film and it is easily her best performance, in my opinion. So lived-in, raw, and totally sympathetic. She deserved that Oscar nomination.
I blame David O. Russell for her choices since. I know she gained Oscar nominations for each of her films with him (and a win, which was one of the least-deserved in the history of this category). He brings out the worst in her - I find her work in his films erratic, thoughtless, unfocused, and unmeasured. She has moments in Joy where she's briefly able to rise above O.Russelll's terrible impulses, but ultimately she never achieves the level of lived-in authenticity and intelligence that Debra Granik was able to bring out of her in Winter's Bone.
Here's hoping that her next films are a return to form for her. I liked her in mother!, but the ultimate star of that film was Aronofsky, Very curious to see how a director like Lila Neugebauer (who predominantly works in theatre), works with her in Red, White and Water.
She is great here but I actually prefer her Oscar winning performance.
It's become so easy to rag on Lawrence, but I think she's a gifted actress and of her nominated work I'd actually select Joy as the best performance of the group. The film itself is another story, but even then I find it to be more of an interesting mess than a flat-out failure. I do want her future output to be more challenging, I'm firmly pro-mother! and the fact that she did that film gives me hope that she has an adventurous streak.
I disagree that Winter’s Bone is her best work, I loved her in Joy and mother!
Best Picture nominee Winter's Bone, thank to the amazing flat ten field! TFE has no choice but to stan.
Even when Lawrence is miscast, she remains a fascinating performer. No movie illustrates this better than "Serena." Playing a femme fatale Kathleen Turner would have scorched the screen with in the 80's, Lawrence lacks the sexual heat the part demanded. However, she is so committed, you forgive her.
She hasn't done a romantic comedy ("Silver Linings" was not a comedy in my book). It would thrilling to see her bring her down to earth persona to a comedy.
Ranking her Oscar Noms:
1) Winter’s Bone
2) Joy
3) American Hustle
4) Silver Linings Playbook (the performance does not age well)
I felt she was great in mother! too but the polarising nature of the film probably ruin her and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Oscar chances
Jennifer Lawrence's one good performance, which I now think was a fluke. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Random commenter: Nah, her time is past, from this movie on her career went downhill
Same random commenter a few months later: About time Certainol Deractress got nominated. Hollywood never rewards mature actresses.
When I taught filmmaking/film studies at a high school, I gave student who were exempt from the finals options of films to watch to end out the year. Only one class chose Winter's Bone and they couldn't take their eyes off the screen; neither could I. That film holds up so well and only gets better on repeated viewings. I still think it deserved 7 nominations (the 4 it received plus Director, Cinematography, and Supporting Actress for Dale Dickey). I give it the win for supporting actor, screenplay, and cinematography. That was a tough year for Best Picture, but I've come close to giving it the win there, too. Then again, my win wasn't even nominated in Picture (Blue Valentine), but that's another issue altogether.
She deserved a nomination for Silver Linings Playbook, but a win was way too much. Winter’s Bone is one of her best works, but Mother is by far my favorite because it was the only time after her breakthrough when I could see her as that “acclaimed wonderful actress” everyone was crazy about.
To this day I believe Winter’s Bone is her best performance. She was fierce, amazing, and unflinching.