Film grounded in Ozarks truth

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Pop culture portrayals of the Ozarks never much impressed southwest Missouri resident Richard Michael.

Cartoon character Li’l Abner reveled in his backwoods simple-mindedness. The Beverly Hillbillies enthralled a generation of television viewers with their dimwitted ways. And tourists in Branson still laugh at the cornpone jokes of the Baldknobbers Jamboree, a 50-year-old musical review featuring bucktoothed (or no-tooth) unrepentant hillbillies.

So Michael was rightfully wary when he learned that a New York City filmmaker planned an adaptation of West Plains novelist Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, the story of a hardscrabble teenage girl fighting to save her family’s home while caring for two younger siblings and looking for her missing father.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the cineplex. Director Debra Granikdove into Ozarks culture, soaking up the history, speech patterns, values and physical landscapes. She hired local actors, musicians and crew members. She resisted financers’ efforts to shoot the film elsewhere, insisting the Missouri backdrop was crucial to the story.

The result: a critically acclaimed film that has emerged not only as an early season Oscar favorite but has also won the hearts of once-skeptical Ozarks residents - despite its stark depiction of rural poverty and a methamphetamine-ravaged, clannish culture unafraid to use violence to protect its secrets.

“It doesn’t portray us in the best of light, but it is a realistic light,” said Michael, a Branson tour boat captain hired by Granik as a local scout and all-around fixer.

For Granik, filming the movie near the Arkansas border in along the Missouri’s Taney and Christian counties was “absolutely crucial.”

“At a certain point, it became nonnegotiable,” she said.

The independent movie won top honors at the Sundance Film Festival and rave reviews from big-city critics. Teenage actress Jennifer Lawrence, who portrays lead character Ree Dolly, is poised for stardom.

The film is also resonating with audiences beyond the festival circuit and big-city art houses.

In Fayetteville, Winter’s Bone has been one of the top draws at a commercial multiplex for nearly six weeks, according to Roadside Attractions, its distributor.

Sold-out crowds flocked to see the film in West Plains, Branson and at a pair of screenings at Missouri State University in Springfield. Proceeds from the campus event were donated in part to a community organization that works to clean up toxic homes with abandoned methamphetamine labs.

West Plains musician Dennis Crider, one of several traditional bluegrass performers featured in Winter’s Bone, has seen a steady stream of touring gigs - and other movieoffers - since the film’s release.

“We’re just waiting to see what happens next,” he said.

The excitement is more muted among regional tourism boosters. Tracy Kimberlin, president of the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau, has yet to see the film. He doesn’t expect to include Winter’s Bone in the bureau’s welcome packets for potential travelers.

“Most people realize that movies are, for the most part, make-believe,” he said.

Mark Biggs, a Missouri State film professor, said the film resonates with audiences who admire protagonist Ree Dolly’s perseverance, self-reliance, strength and devotion.

The portrayals of rural poverty and methamphetamine-soaked culture, while accurate, don’t subsume the character-driven story, he said.

“The qualities of the heroine of the film makes it a tale that is above and beyond any specific location,” he said. “The portrayal, if unflinching, was authentic and sincere.”