winters bone essay

I believe that Winters Bone does rely on a very basic understanding of the social context behind it throughout the majority of the film, however in some scenes it relies on a more in-depth understanding of its social context for the film to be fully enjoyed. An example of a scene where this understanding is more focused on is the scene where Ree must saw off her father’s hands to prove he is dead. I believe this scene is where the film starts to lose people as before this the danger of poverty and becoming homeless is very real and easy for anyone to understand, as represented in the mise-en-scene such as Ree’s clothing as it tattered and mostly looks like hand me downs which only purpose is to keep her warm in the winter, this shows that she either doesn’t care for her appearance or that she simply can’t afford new clothes to wear. The scene first shows a hand-held close-up of Ree plunging her hand into the river to retrieve her fathers dead body. The shot lasts a long time before she puts her hands into the water to try and build up suspense and whilst the suspense makes sense as she is considering not doing this, the fact that she still went through with it immediately took me out of as an an average person I could no longer relate to or fully grasp the emergency of the poverty to lead her to do this and so therefore would not go through with this myself. Because of this it made it seem unrealistic to me. After this there are several close ups of the reactions of Ree and Merab, the reactions shown from Ree could be perceived as believable if an understatement of the average persons reactions. The performance shown portrays Ree as sad and in shock due to the increase in her heavy breathing and weak refusals of using the saw, but ultimately, she is shown to be strong enough to do this and although this may be due to the immediacy of being homeless looming over her head I feel like the average viewer – myself included – would not be able to do this, even going as far to be sick instead. This therefore made me feel took out of it again.

After Merab has chopped off both of Ree’s fathers hands there is a close up of Ree who looks numb and expressionless, once again this reaction is not the expected one of someone who has been a part of body mutilation to their own family, most people – myself included – would probably be sick, however here that may be because we can’t relate to the sense of secretive loyalty there is in the Dolly family which would lead to this sort of thing being considered as normal, this loyalty is also shown when Merab puts her coat around Ree to try and comfort her. As the average person would not have a family as secretive as this to the point where this is considered average, this is unrealistic to them and puts them at unease, making it feel like they’re watching a film, not that this is a realistic portrayal of a family.