Do the juries at the Sundance Film Festival have something against movies that have an optimistic outlook on life? I ask because for three years running, the festival’s top award, the Grand Jury Prize, has gone to bleak, harrowing dramas centering on the lives of poverty-stricken female protagonists. In 2008, it was the icy “Frozen River” which earned Melissa Leo an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Last year’s winner, “Precious” was nominated for six Oscars and won two – including a Best Supporting Actress award for Mo’Nique. This year’s winner was the mesmerizing “Winter’s Bone,” which is probably the year’s most gut-wrenching drama. It’s also a showcase for young actress Jennifer Lawrence who gives one of the year’s best performances. Ree Dolly (Lawrence) isn’t your typical 17-year-old girl. While other girls her age are in school, on their cell-phones, ogling boys and shopping for new outfits, Ree is out chopping wood, hunting squirrels, and using her intellect to try and save her ultra-poor Ozark family from a life that can only be described as hell. Forced into maturity after her meth-cooking father abandoned them, Ree has morphed into a tough and courageous woman who not only has to take care of her pre-teen siblings but also her perpetually sick and barely-sane mother. As if things weren’t already drab, Ree is saddled with the devastating news that her now-missing father has put the family’s home up as his bail bond. With less than a week left before they lose their home, Ree sets out to find her dad whatever the cost, even if it means travelling on foot through the rough Ozark terrain and endangering her life by procuring information from some of the most brutal and vile human beings I’ve seen in a movie this year.

If there is one reason to see “Winter’s Bone,” it’s for the incredible award-worthy performances from Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes (who play’s Ree’s drug-addicted uncle Teardrop). Lawrence, whose credits have mostly been relegated to guest appearances on television shows and a supporting role in “The Burning Plain,” is simply magnificent as the courageous Ree. She’s in almost every scene of the picture and in the hands of a lesser actress the film wouldn’t have been as powerful. While it’s never clever to scream Oscar in August, I cannot foresee how this performance gets overlooked during the busy awards season this fall. It is simply one of the year’s most grounded and stunning works. What’s incredible to believe is that it comes from a 17-year-old! It’s a good thing she’s getting noticed too as because of her role here, Lawrence has now managed to nab a vital role in the upcoming and highly anticipated blockbuster “X-Men: First Class.” Being a gorgeous woman doesn’t hurt. Hawkes too, is a force as the revenge-driven Teardrop. A scene where he is pulled over by a cop is probably the most nail-biting sequence in the entire film.

VERDICT: “Winter’s Bone” is not an easy film. Like previous Sundance winners “Frozen River,” “Precious” and the Ozark community in which the film is set, Debra Granik’s film is brutal, disturbing and cold. It’s also a very slow-burn with very few “exciting” sequences. But if you’re willing to weather the desolate and haunting atmosphere, a rich cinematic experience awaits you. With a phenomenal sure-to-be-Oscar-nominated performance from the young Jennifer Lawrence and a terrific supporting turn from John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone” is a gripping and disturbing portrait of drug and poverty-stricken rural America. One of the year’s best.

GRADE: A-

WINTER’S BONE
Directed by: Debra Granik
Written by: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Kevin Breznahan, Dale Dickey
Rated: R (for some drug material, language and violent content)