Debra Granik is a great filmmaker who does not get to make enough movies because capitalism. Alas. This column will look at her non-documentary feature films.
3. Down to the Bone [2004]
Down to the Bone is a poverty exploitation film that is most valuably thought of in the context of Granik’s feature films that came after them (Winter’s Bone and Leave No Trace). Vera Farmiga is playing an all-too-familiar American who has been abandoned by the institutions of this country due to her (in the country’s eyes) two unforgivable sins: poverty and addiction. While Ben Foster in Leave No Trace is trying to live outside of society and Jennifer Lawrence is a part of a community abandoned by society in The Winter’s Bone, Farmiga is fundamentally inside society, trying to work a (shitty, low-wage) job and raise her family. The crippling combination of her addiction and economic status make that impossible though. She has run out of people and resources and that means things are only get worse and worse for her because The State has no interest in keeping her and her family truly safe and thriving. Farmiga holds this film together and prevents it from feeling like the wretched Nomadland where the camera feels like a gawking tourist. Granik would do much better though in the years to come.
2. Winter’s Bone [2010]
In times of crisis, one of the things about life that simultaneously comforts me and takes me aback is how life simply moves on just like how it did the day before. It can be genuinely surreal how something objectively awful or insane just happened in your life but you still have to make sure dinner is on the table, the trash gets taken out, and whatnot. Life does not halt.
Exploring this idea in Winter’s Bone becomes all the more powerful given Granik’s ability and interest in exploring people who have not just be failed by the institutions of the United States but in a large way have been removed from “society” (in the very most broad to the point of uselessness of the word). Lawrence delivers a commanding performance (and perhaps still her best) of just trying to find a way to survive in the wake of her father’s complete disappearance.
Grief is not Lawrence’s battle in this story but merely finding a way to keep what little she has so she and her family can keep going on another day. What does one do when do when everything falls apart and but you still have so much left to lose?
1. Leave No Trace [2018]
Leave No Trace makes for not just a great (non-documentary) follow-up to Winter’s Bone but also a great companion piece to that film. In Bone, we saw the leftovers of a family abandoned by the institutions of this hellhole country. While that family was in a multi-generational community that have been removed from the rest of country, Trace is about an individual who has tried to go even further off the reservation.
Ben Foster is a war veteran who has seen too much and can no longer continue to go on with the status quo. He has chosen to remove himself from society as much as humanly possible. And while that would be fine enough for him and his very broken self (until his inevitable early death alone in the woods), he has a young daughter to take care of and that complicates what he is doing in every way.
Trace examines the costs of trying to live outside of society in a society that does not allow for that. In this country, you have to buy in or sell out in some way or form. Ben Foster has seen too much, and he cannot bring himself to do that anymore. Trace dares us to ask if there is a better way of doing things. The film is not arrogant enough to pretend it has answers. But it knows something is wrong.
The Reel World 