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Interior of Missouri Ozarks cabin housing six people, May 1936. Photograph by Carl Mydens, Farm Security Administration. Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
As the RFT reported yesterday, Winter's Bone, Debra Granik's adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel, is doing extremely well at Sundance. If you haven't read the book, it's set in the Ozarks, and concerns 17-year-old Ree Dolly, who is forced to hunt down her meth-cook dad after he jumps bail and puts the family cabin up for bond. Granik and her crew worked with Woodrell to flesh out the script, filmed the entire movie in Missouri, cast local people, and sought authenticity in every detail, costuming the cast in worn flannels and Carhartts, rather than just pulling clothes off the rack at Rural King. Granik's excruciating attention to detail has paid off -- along with Blue Valentine, Winter's Bone has become one of the buzz films of the festival. Though the film is by all accounts excellent, it seems part of the draw is a fascination with Southern Missouri's apparently exotic culture -- one reviewer proclaimed the film's setting as "so foreign it might as well be a different planet." That planet is, despite what impression the film's audience may be forming, not a wholly miserable one, as folklorist Vance Randolph showed in books like Ozark Magic and Folklore. As ancient Rudolph Crouse told a New York Times reporter writing about the area in late 1980s: "I thought this was the closest place to paradise you would ever find.'' --Stefene Russell
