Monday, January 03, 2011
Winter's Bone
I read the novel by Daniel Woodrell a couple of years ago and liked it a lot, but WINTER’S BONE may be one of those cases where something that worked for me as a novel didn’t work as well as a film. There’s nothing wrong with this movie, you understand. It’s very well-made and well-acted, especially by Jennifer Lawrence, who deserves all the praise she’s received for her portrayal of Ree Dolly, the teenage girl from the Ozarks who’s searching for her criminal father. But the movie is so unrelentingly bleak and grim that after a while it’s just painful to watch. So while I admire this film and recommend that you watch it, especially if you’re read Woodrell’s book, I can’t bring myself to say that I actually liked it. Does that make sense?
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4 comments:
Unrelentingly grim seems to be in now. The Road's high moment was when Viggo Mortensen died after fighting off cannibals and other nastiness for 90 min.
And the Coen brothers' last movie, A Serious Man, was anything but fun.
Yes, it does given your upbeat personality. It takes someone with a bleak world view (like mine) to really not mind its outlook. I nod in recognition while you shake your head in despair.
Did you really think the movie was bleaker than the novel? Admittedly I read the novel 3-4 years ago and just saw the movie late last year, but I'd say they were about equal in the bleakness department.
No, the book's just as bleak as the movie. But the movie bothered me more, maybe because of the immediacy of film and the fact that it's not filtered through my imagination, as a book is. I can read a really violent, gory horror novel and not be bothered by it nearly as much as I would be by a movie like that.
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