Risk and Resilience in the Ozarks

Reviews the film, Winter’s Bone directed by Debra Granik (2010). Winter’s Bone, filmed in the the bleak and impoverished winter landscape of the southern Missouri Ozarks, is a gripping and layered movie that is, on its surface, a vignette of futility and hopelessness. However, deeper examination reveals it to be a case study in resilience and personal growth. The reviewer finds it to be a remarkable film, but it is not an easy movie to watch. The viewer is left wanting a happier, more carefree future for the 17-year-old Ree Dolly and her siblings—and nothing in the unremitting brutality of the environment hints at that possibility (although the reappearance of the banjo symbolism in the last scene may represent a glimmer of hope). Resilience is not about happiness; it is about positive adaptation. It is about confidence that one can enter the dark swamp and emerge, battered but victorious. Resilience—at least in the Missouri Ozarks—is more adaptive than happiness, and perhaps for Ree it is ultimately more rewarding, especially when it is seasoned with sibling love and a little banjo music. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)