Bone to pick

Sight & Sound (February 2011 issue) has a piece on Coens’ remake of True Grit. The article’s titled ‘No country for young girls’ and that phrase neatly sums up the gritty hard-worn coming-of-age story in Winter’s Bone.

It’s a slice of realistic Americana, one that’s pitched about midway between the wholesome family TV entertainment of The Waltons or Little House On The Prairie, and the despicably unfriendly, with no-redeeming-features amorality, character-fest of The Devil’s Rejects. Which is to say that, its overall tone is halfway to nowhere in particular, and manages to take up 100 minutes of your viewing time without offering much drama beyond terse Missouri inhospitality and outright Ozark hostility (due to criminal activities involving making drugs, not moonshine), and stubborn teenage rebellion (yet with a ‘noble’ cause - that of saving a rundown family homestead from profiteers).

There’s a formidable-looking redneck bloke, some kind of community patriarch type, who’s named ‘Thump’. At that point… the bleak solemnity and dreary mood was just so OTT that oh, how I larfed! But, to be honest, I found this ‘people picture’ was mostly rather dull.