Winter's touch -Review Winter's Bone

So I just finished watching this movie called “Winter’s Bone” and now I’m feeling writery (not a word, but I like it). It was an odd movie about a 17 years-old girl who is in charge of taking care of the family which includes her mute mother and her two younger siblings. They live in a redneck sort of town either up North (where they have southern accents for some reason) or the northern part of the South (because the weather is cold and getting colder throughout the movie).

The story focuses on the family’s missing father, Jessup, who put the house up as payment for bail. He has a court appearance in a few days and if he doesn’t show up, the family loses the house. The house is all this young girl and her family has for a home, so she sets off on a mission to find her father to make sure he shows up to court. This hunt, however, turns out to be more dangerous than anyone in the town would want to get involved in and the deeper she digs the deeper she starts to dig her own grave.

But the mission is a must if she is to keep her family together. With the help of some neighbors, family, friends and even some enemies, she finds her dad and there is a bittersweet ending. While the movie falls a little flat of raising the sense of danger for our 17 year-old heron (somehow you just know that she is going to be okay no matter who’s threatening her), the lead actress’s tough, yet innocents, demeanor trains us to feel what she is feelings. If she is feeling brave and confident, then we the audience feel brave and confident. If she is rattled or worried, then we are rattled or worried. If she feels numb or pain, we feel the same.

The actress, whose name is Jennifer Lawrence by the way, will probably (and should) receive high remarks and praise for her work. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an Oscar nomination. It’s just that type of work that gets actress’s attention and helps them build a promising career.

But my feelings after viewing this movie are light. Meaning, good. I don’t feel sad for the family or the characters, although there is merit in feeling that way. Without giving away the ending, I will say that our heron finds her dad in a way you wouldn’t want to find your parent. When she does discover him, she has already come to terms with the result. Meaning there was nothing left to do, but do what needed to be done to help her family.

While she does shed tears for her father (how could she not) she Sally Forth’s with her duty knowing that there is little to nothing left to do to help her dad in this moment. She is forced to face a challenge will beyond the years of a 17 year-old in order to do the right thing for her family.

It’s that strength in her that I see in myself. It reminds me of when I lived in Chicago and I was her, taking care of my family against the sour spoils of our environment. Sure, I wasn’t 17 nor was I raising two younger siblings. But I certain could relate to playing the hand that’s dealt to you and getting over the bullshit really soon.

So what I lost my mother when I was 5. So what I found my father’s dead body on his bedroom floor at 21. So what I wasn’t born rich. I was handed a deck of cards and simply told to deal with them. I didn’t seek pity on those with a better hand, but I certainly didn’t settle for the lesser hand I was dealt.

It took bravery, courage, fear, fight and uncertainly for me to keep moving out of the place I was at. While I’m still pulling myself up and still trying to get a better hand to play the game of life with, I am not turning over my cards and expecting someone to pick them up and play them for me. I still have to do this myself.

This reminds me that I haven’t been thankful enough. I really haven’t been thanking God aka My Spiritual-Self enough for all that they have giving me. I have a wonderful life that is getting better and better and so I have nothing to fear. Everything is a turning point and I still have the chance to make choices that will deal me the right cards.

Earlier I was feeling bad about money and I didn’t want too. Something had happened earlier which now prevented from going to the movies to see a movie I desperately wanted to see. So I was stuck staying home and renting. “Winter’s Bone” was the movie I rented. Now I’m feeling better about money because now I see I didn’t need it like I thought I did.

Sometimes it’s hard to see how full of wealth you are because you’re looking at the wrong thing. I watched this movie on a $600 TV that I got myself last year because I wanted it. I worked hard enough to afford and because I did, I’m happy with what I did for me.
Success isn’t measured in money, but how happy you are. Money is just a sweet piece of cherry that comes with happiness, sometimes, but not all the time. What I felt after viewing “Winter’s Bone” is that money buys very pieces of happiness, but it helps bring us closer to the things that make us happy.
At the end of the movie our heron is given a large sum of money due to the hard work she put in just to keep the house. She needed to keep the house to keep her family. She didn’t go out looking for her money; she went looking for her daddy. When she did go looking for money in the movie she found that it would be much harder to get than it would be than finding her daddy.
All in all this was a satisfying movie. I didn’t cry (would have liked too), but I didn’t walk away feeling cheater. I’d become use to seeing movies like this where the end is less than satisfying. While I can’t think of any now I would say my beef with movies like these come from bio-pics in while the main character dies or is killed in the end. I guess because that didn’t happen in this movie I feel like I was served justice.
This movie made me feel more grateful, without being a heart-warming family movie. It was just the right about movie discipline in order to tell a tough story and still have you walk away like you didn’t miss anything. Like all your questions got answered. Basically, you paid for a show and you got one.