The movie this week is Winter’s Bone starring Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old girl who is struggling with raising her younger brother and sister, taking care of her mentally ill mother and finding her meth-cooking father who has disappeared. I was curious to see this movie because it won Sundance and was nominated for a lot of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted screenplay and Best Actress.
To sum it up, this movie is Deliverance meets Pulp Fiction meets Nancy Drew. It’s a dark thriller full of weird people, interesting twists and turns and lots of drugs.
The thing about this movie that struck me is that my white guilt is now officially over.
Black victo-crats and activists are always saying they’re kept down by the white man because of the color of their skin, that the man raises the prices of food and gas in the ghettos and that since it’s hard to get out of the ghetto to make purchases they are oppressed. They always say that they live in a different America than the average white person.
Black people have nothing on these Appalachians. I don’t think being white has helped them much. You want to talk about a different America? This is a different country. The Appalachians used to even get paid in a different currency than the American dollar: I think it was called skrit. You think it’s hard to get out of the ghetto? Try leaving the Appalachian Mountains. If someone wants to charge you more when you’re hundreds of miles away from the nearest city, you have to pay it. You want to talk about a lack of opportunity? Black people can get football scholarships. Appalachians can’t even afford footballs.
Black activist leaders complain about too much unhealthy fast food being sold in the ghettos. To an Appalachian, unhealthy fast food is a particularly speedy squirrel with rabies they have to kill for dinner tonight.
These supposedly oppressed people in the ghettos have flat screen TV’s cable and radios. The Appalachian kids don’t have any TV’s or radios: they want their meth-addicted uncles to play banjo for them because it’s the only entertainment they’re going to get.
I really liked this movie because at its heart it’s a really interesting thriller. Don’t see it if you want an “up” movie or a frothy good time. This is definitely a movie for a cold rainy night when you’re in a reticent mood. I give it four Fini’s: it moved slowly but for the most part, it was a wonderful, well-acted movie.
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