Winter's Bone

Winter’s Bone is a story about organized crime in the middle of nowhere. It is the story of a girl’s quest to save her family from losing everything to the forces of the law by facing the perhaps scarier forces of inbred meth cooks.

It is a well made independent film, but it has its problems. It is slow. It is depressing. Yet with all that, there is the smallest hint of hope. The protagonist is determined to save her family, and—even though we know this is a movie and protagonists usually come out on top—we never doubt that she will find her way.

In the end the little hope that this story offers is too little. The family will survive, but how long will it be until they will sink under the oppressive force of poverty that causes every relation to turn to an easy way out?

We hope that Ree Dolly will stay true to her values, but where is her way out? This is a problem that poverty creates all over the world and unfortunately the most common Christian response to it is, “People need to do what is right, then they wouldn’t have such problems.” Instead, the case is often that people turn to wrong when they see that as the only way out of their problematic circumstances.