Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 5 November

Winter’s Bone (Granik, 2010)

On this day in 2010, I pos­ted a review of the phe­nom­en­al Winter’s Bone, the film that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career.

Such an easy film to recom­mend, I don’t know any­one who wouldn’t be blown away by it. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance that year (and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize) and went on to be nom­in­ated for four Oscars – Best Picture, Best Actress for Lawrence, Best Supporting Actor for the great John Hawkes and Best Screenplay for Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini.

But … and this is a big but … it is almost impossible to watch legit­im­ately in Aotearoa New Zealand. If you want to watch a pir­ated rip of the Blu-ray with Arabic sub­titles, you might find one on YouTube, but it isn’t avail­able on any stream­er here or even a digit­al rent­al. In fact, it’s easi­er to find and read the ori­gin­al book than it is to watch the film.

The only option is to rent a DVD from either Aro Street Video (Wellington) or Alice in Videoland (Christchurch). A Blu-ray ver­sion was avail­able to buy at one time but has long since been deleted. You might feel like pay­ing a premi­um to import a copy from over­seas. It’s tempt­ing me, right now.

This is an unsat­is­fact­ory state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree. We were prom­ised that the digit­al future would sup­ply us with everything, whenev­er we wanted it, but, in many cases, avail­ab­il­ity has only become worse. 

Anyway, if you already have it in your col­lec­tion and need a prompt to rewatch, here’s my review of Winter’s Bone:

Half way through Winter’s Bone I found myself think­ing, “So, this is what the Western has become?” The best Westerns are about find­ing or sus­tain­ing a mor­al path though a law­less fron­ti­er and the fron­ti­er in Winter’s Bone is the hid­den world of the rur­al poor and the path is a strange and ter­ri­fy­ing one.

In the rough and remote Ozark Mountains, teen­age Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is single-handedly bring­ing up her two young sib­lings while caring for her emo­tion­ally dam­aged moth­er. One cold morn­ing the Sheriff turns up with the news that her fath­er, Jessup, used their house as his bail bond and unless Ree can find him and per­suade him to turn up for Court, the fam­ily will lose everything.

Jessup is (or maybe was) what we would call a ‘P’ deal­er – the only eco­nomy in the area show­ing any kind of growth. But the com­pany he was keep­ing were the mean­est of the mean and to find her fath­er Ree must ven­ture into dan­ger­ous territory.

Ree’s ele­ment­al quest is the core of one of the great films of this year. The poster makes it look like a ghost story – it isn’t. It’s gritty, earthy, and uncom­prom­ising but it’s enorm­ously sat­is­fy­ing: how do you keep your­self (and your “self”) alive under seem­ingly intol­er­able pressures.

Also in that Bonfire Night review: action-comedy Red (“Director Robert Schwentke has assembled a fant­ast­ic cast (includ­ing Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Ernest Borgnine, Brian Cox and Richard Dreyfuss) and then loses all his nerve, leav­ing them to dog-paddle their way through scenes that have no drive or, what’s the word, dir­ec­tion.”); Paranormal Activity 2, Resident Evil: Afterlife; Sally Hawkins vehicle Made in Dagenham; Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s con­tro­ver­sial mock­u­ment­ary I’m Still Here; and Fellini’s Satyricon.

Where to watch Winter’s Bone

Aotearoa & Australia: Unavailable online

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video

Ireland: Streaming on Mubi

India: Unavailable online

USA: Streaming on Roku (free with ads) or Kanopy (via par­ti­cip­at­ing libraries)

UK: Streaming on Mubi or ITVx

Further listening (and an editor’s note)

Tomorrow I’m sit­ting in for Simon Morris pro­du­cing and host­ing the weekly RNZ pro­gramme At the Movies so there won’t be a “Something to watch tonight”, sorry.

If you want to listen to the show – fea­tur­ing Zemeckis’ Here, Ogilvie’s Head South and Schimberg’s A Different Man – note that the usu­al broad­cast slot has been usurped by American elec­tion cov­er­age but the pod­cast down­load will be avail­able here around 7.00pm.