The Benighted South, Yet Again
Oh My God, an LJ posting
Musings on the Oscars. I mostly tweeted on the Oscars, but decided I wanted to write a few words about "Winter's Bone." "Winter's Bone" was the best film I have seen from last year. Since I haven't seen every film, nor even all the nominated films, including "The King's Speech," I can't say it was the best film of the year, but it was truly great. I loved "True Grit" and I liked "127 Hours" but until I saw Winter's Bone last week the best movie I'd seen in 2010 was "Despicable Me," which wasn't nominated for anything. I thought "Winter's Bone" was an amazing film--beyond anything else I'd seen in a long time in terms of story telling, gritty realism, and honest acting.
And John Hawkes was robbed.
I should say that Jeff Bridges was probably robbed too, but there are a number of reasons why Colin Firth had to win the Oscar: it was his turn, Oscar (Tom Hanks being an aeration) doesn't like to give back-to-back acting awards. Plus the fact that Roster Cogburn was the best and most beloved performance--and only Oscar win--for the most beloved actor of all time, and there was just no way that Jeff was going to win this year.
"True Grit," by the way, was good, but I'm not the person to be commenting on it. I love the original too much. I watch it probably once a year or so. To me the original "True Grit" is a truly great film, which deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as not only Magnificent Seven or Stagecoach, but also int he same breath as Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. As much as I liked the new version I couldn't help seeing it as a good movie imitating a great movie. It was a post-"Jose Wales" "True Grit," with the same slightly surrealistic undertones missing from the first one, and in shot in various shades of gray instead of the green hills and golden aspens of the John Wayne version. I was surprised how much of the dialogue survived intact, even is spoken by different actors. Bridges was gruffer but hard to understand. Matt Damon was an improvement over Glen Campbell (who was nonetheless good for hsi part). Hailee Steinfeld was great but Kim Darby had an other-worldly quality to her performance that I always found haunting. Interestingly, the performance I liked best in the new version was Barry Pepper's five minutes of screen time as Lucky Ned, but Barry Pepper was the one actor who was most like the performance in the original. His cadence, his speech patterns, it was like he was channeling Robert Duval (my favorite character in the original--there is something about that role that I just like). So I'm not a good person to say.
But back to "Winter's Bone." Perhaps the reason I liked it so much is that I've been reading Faulkner lately. I picked up the Norton Critical Edition of As I Lay Dying and and have been reading it. I was unsure at first about it--I had the same response I sometimes get to Nabakov: it's brilliant, but what's the point. But about the time of the river crossing I got sucked in and I ended up blown away by it. It is great. That edition comes with a lot of criticism and context as well, and that kind of works to place "Winter's Bone" (and "Justified," for that matter) into a similar place. The so-called "Southern Gothic" style, of which Faulkner is the most famous adherent, presents the south as a place of crushing poverty, ignorance, violence, and superstition, where there are few redeeming characters and life is so cheap that death becomes routine. (some critics note comparisons between Faulkner and the Russian Realists as well). This is a view of the south that has stayed with us today, and it was intensified by depression-era pictures of dirt-poor share croppers, by the violence of the Civil Rights Movement, and by depictions of the south that were part of President Johnson's "War on Poverty." But this view of the south was essentially a reaction to the post Civil War depictions of the South as a lost agrarian paradise, and of the romance of the Lost Cause. Faulkner and others were peeling back the pastoral veneer to reveal the horrible conditions of most people, white and black, in the impoverished south.
In popular culture, the dirt-poor redneck farmer, stupid and superstitious, is an archetype. But it is not too far off of reality. Poverty in the Ozarks is still stifling, and drug use, especially Meth, is high. If As I Lay Dying had been written in 2010, the Bundren's would be toothless Meth addicts, Dewey Dell would be a hooker turning tricks to afford her next fix, Anse would be running a still, Jewel would be a murderous enforcer, and Darl would have burnt down the barn by blowing up his meth lab. Like the Bundren's journey to Jefferson, Ree's search for her father has the structure of a Homeric epic, but her heroism is dwarfed by the villainy around her.
Like "Deliverance", "Winter's Bone" falls squarely within this tradition, so anyone looking at "Winter's Bone" should see the hand of Faulkner stirring the tale.
I suppose it's also worth nothing that, like Scarlet Ohara, Ree's only purpose is to save her family land. She will do whatever it takes to keep the land in the family, and it leads her on a dangerous quest, almost David Lynch-like in its dark terror. Seeing how Southern Gothic is a counter response to the romance of the Lost Cause, perhaps "Winter's Bone" is a dark doppelganger to "Gone with the Wind," and Ree Dolly the anit-Scarlet.
And John Hawkes was just awesome.
Musings on the Oscars. I mostly tweeted on the Oscars, but decided I wanted to write a few words about "Winter's Bone." "Winter's Bone" was the best film I have seen from last year. Since I haven't seen every film, nor even all the nominated films, including "The King's Speech," I can't say it was the best film of the year, but it was truly great. I loved "True Grit" and I liked "127 Hours" but until I saw Winter's Bone last week the best movie I'd seen in 2010 was "Despicable Me," which wasn't nominated for anything. I thought "Winter's Bone" was an amazing film--beyond anything else I'd seen in a long time in terms of story telling, gritty realism, and honest acting.
And John Hawkes was robbed.
I should say that Jeff Bridges was probably robbed too, but there are a number of reasons why Colin Firth had to win the Oscar: it was his turn, Oscar (Tom Hanks being an aeration) doesn't like to give back-to-back acting awards. Plus the fact that Roster Cogburn was the best and most beloved performance--and only Oscar win--for the most beloved actor of all time, and there was just no way that Jeff was going to win this year.
"True Grit," by the way, was good, but I'm not the person to be commenting on it. I love the original too much. I watch it probably once a year or so. To me the original "True Grit" is a truly great film, which deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as not only Magnificent Seven or Stagecoach, but also int he same breath as Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. As much as I liked the new version I couldn't help seeing it as a good movie imitating a great movie. It was a post-"Jose Wales" "True Grit," with the same slightly surrealistic undertones missing from the first one, and in shot in various shades of gray instead of the green hills and golden aspens of the John Wayne version. I was surprised how much of the dialogue survived intact, even is spoken by different actors. Bridges was gruffer but hard to understand. Matt Damon was an improvement over Glen Campbell (who was nonetheless good for hsi part). Hailee Steinfeld was great but Kim Darby had an other-worldly quality to her performance that I always found haunting. Interestingly, the performance I liked best in the new version was Barry Pepper's five minutes of screen time as Lucky Ned, but Barry Pepper was the one actor who was most like the performance in the original. His cadence, his speech patterns, it was like he was channeling Robert Duval (my favorite character in the original--there is something about that role that I just like). So I'm not a good person to say.
But back to "Winter's Bone." Perhaps the reason I liked it so much is that I've been reading Faulkner lately. I picked up the Norton Critical Edition of As I Lay Dying and and have been reading it. I was unsure at first about it--I had the same response I sometimes get to Nabakov: it's brilliant, but what's the point. But about the time of the river crossing I got sucked in and I ended up blown away by it. It is great. That edition comes with a lot of criticism and context as well, and that kind of works to place "Winter's Bone" (and "Justified," for that matter) into a similar place. The so-called "Southern Gothic" style, of which Faulkner is the most famous adherent, presents the south as a place of crushing poverty, ignorance, violence, and superstition, where there are few redeeming characters and life is so cheap that death becomes routine. (some critics note comparisons between Faulkner and the Russian Realists as well). This is a view of the south that has stayed with us today, and it was intensified by depression-era pictures of dirt-poor share croppers, by the violence of the Civil Rights Movement, and by depictions of the south that were part of President Johnson's "War on Poverty." But this view of the south was essentially a reaction to the post Civil War depictions of the South as a lost agrarian paradise, and of the romance of the Lost Cause. Faulkner and others were peeling back the pastoral veneer to reveal the horrible conditions of most people, white and black, in the impoverished south.
In popular culture, the dirt-poor redneck farmer, stupid and superstitious, is an archetype. But it is not too far off of reality. Poverty in the Ozarks is still stifling, and drug use, especially Meth, is high. If As I Lay Dying had been written in 2010, the Bundren's would be toothless Meth addicts, Dewey Dell would be a hooker turning tricks to afford her next fix, Anse would be running a still, Jewel would be a murderous enforcer, and Darl would have burnt down the barn by blowing up his meth lab. Like the Bundren's journey to Jefferson, Ree's search for her father has the structure of a Homeric epic, but her heroism is dwarfed by the villainy around her.
Like "Deliverance", "Winter's Bone" falls squarely within this tradition, so anyone looking at "Winter's Bone" should see the hand of Faulkner stirring the tale.
I suppose it's also worth nothing that, like Scarlet Ohara, Ree's only purpose is to save her family land. She will do whatever it takes to keep the land in the family, and it leads her on a dangerous quest, almost David Lynch-like in its dark terror. Seeing how Southern Gothic is a counter response to the romance of the Lost Cause, perhaps "Winter's Bone" is a dark doppelganger to "Gone with the Wind," and Ree Dolly the anit-Scarlet.
And John Hawkes was just awesome.