Winter's Bone essay

How far does “Winter’s Bone” rely upon an understanding of its social context?

The establishing shot is a long shot of the Ozark landscape, it is pretty desolate mise-en-scene with a scattering of cars and trailers, highlighting the extreme poverty of the area, in the foreground the bare dark brown tree, which looks quite spikey giving connotations of a harsh environment which reflects that of the characters in the film. The mise-en-scene of the forest symbolizes a distance between the Ozark community and that of the rest of the American society. This is a piece of social context that is pretty vital to understand before commencing the watching of the film, otherwise many of the elements surrounding the plot will seem weird to an active audience, for example: Ree is only allowed to talk to the women of the town who do all the work while the men laze around and do mainly nothing, with some exception to Teardrop. The dark and grey colour scheme shown by the sky shows a strong idea of verisimilitude, a common trait of independent films. It creates an idea that the audience will have to be active in order to understand the full deeper meanings in the plot. This shows the film is already establishing the social context, which the plot heavily relies on. However many audiences may perceive this shot as a low key downbeat slow paced scene, oppositional to the vast majority of non-independent films. This establishes both the fact that there won't be many high action or high octane scenes that accommodate a wide passive audience, allowing them to watch the film without logic becoming a huge issue and for them to take a preferred reading just because they aren't analysing almost anything that happens, and that in this film Granik will be using many of the predominant features of an independent film, including long scenes involving a minimal amount of cuts and a strong sense of neo-realism both of which allow for money to be saved. Consequently, when using these features there is a high chance of making the mainstream audience, those who aren't used to many of the techniques often found in independent cinema, abandon there active viewing as they are confronted by these alien forms of filmmaking. This will have the effect of forcing them to quickly try to come to terms with a method of cinematography they are completely new to or to switch off from active viewing and ignoring many of the subtle plot points key to understanding "winter's bone". 

The non-diegetic music playing over the opening scene is folk music, this fits the tone of the film and the context of poverty as many folk songs are based on all the issues that plague ordinary working class people of the Midwest. This type of music is contrasting to a mainstream audience's tastes and therefor could have the effect of switching many people off, or to give them an oppositional reading into the film as they aren't focussing enough on the details. The film requires a very active audience for a preferred reading as many of the plot aspects are quite subtle and rely upon the audience thinking through the situation taking into account the social context. For example when the body of the father is found in the swamp, this could be seen as a weird plot twist leaving a passive audience confused and more likely to take an oppositional reading to the film, whereas with an active audience thinking through the verisimilitude would be more capable of actually understanding why Ree has to cut both hands off and why he ended up in the swamp. They would then be able to have a preferred reading while allowing some people to choose whether or not they were liking of this particular plot point: negotiated reading.

In the opening scene I find myself being active, originally to understand the type of film we are dealing with, however the fore-discussed aspects forced me to remain active as I knew that many independent films have deep obscure meanings. The social context was quite important for me to put the first scene into perspective, because it allowed me to understand the poverty that the community suffered and why it suffered it. The following shot of two children bouncing up and down on the trampoline gave me the idea that the film was going to be about the innocence at the heart of the drug fuelled poverty and I wouldn't have been able to be locate the message if I was viewing the film as a passive audience. I believe that I took a preferred reading, a reading that I was only able take because I understood where the film was set and the problems of the community, unlike many watching from a mainstream audience.
In conclusion, I would say that "Winters Bone" relies somewhat on its social context because although it would be extremely hard to understand many aspects from the film without understanding the Ozark community, the opening scene establishes the fact that the community is cut off from the rest of the USA and that the area is extremely poor, two factors that would shine some light onto many of the unexplained plot points that rely upon the social context.