It's hard to call "Winter's Bone" a surprise Best Picture nominee when the film spent most of 2010 garnering rave reviews, picking up awards (the Sundance Grand Jury and screenwriting prizes, Best Film at the Gotham Awards) and turning Jennifer Lawrence into the year's breakout new star. Still, the four nominations for Debra Granik's hardscrabble tale of a Southern Missouri teen looking for her meth-dealing father turned the heads of some who thought Ben Affleck's sleeker, bigger and more profitable "The Town" would get the nod instead.
But if "Winter's Bone" isn't the likeliest nominee, it just might be one of the best. The recipient of nods for Best Picture, actress Lawrence, supporting actor John Hawkes and the script from Granik and Anne Rosellini, the film was lauded as "a masterful film … that's haunting and provocative" by last year's Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow, who hosted a pair of private screenings in January.
Granik, whose previous film was the critical hit (but commercial failure) "Down to the Bone," now finds herself in an unexpected place: still talking about a gritty, sub-$5 million independent film that had its debut more than a year ago.
When your film showed at Sundance last January and you signed a deal with Roadside Attractions, did you ever imagine it still being a topic of conversation a year later?
Never never never never. I mean, never. Especially since the experience of my first film was so confusing, that something could get such strong critical response, and an actress [Vera Farmiga] could go to on be enjoyed, but the film would have no life at all. Not even a drop. So we were … I don’t want to say cynical, but our expectations were tiny.
Are you comfortable with the demands of awards season?
I will do what it takes, because I would like me and my partners and other filmmakers in my category – scrappy filmmakers, the under fives – I would like us to do work. So if that means entering the more mainstream system of how films get acknowledged, of course I will put a lot of effort into doing that. Because it really is about diversifying the American film culture.
I don’t want to be lofty about it, but I felt the same way about [the 2008 indie] "Frozen River." For me, it was very important that that film had some presence. It helped me in my dark hours as the financing went south on this film. And it could only happen if the film went through this season. You can't do that outside of the season, I've come to recognize that.
You mention the financing going south on "Winter's Bone." Why was it so hard to get the film off the ground?
The subject matter. For people who place films in the marketplace, violence is not considered dark, it's considered thrilling or cathartic or something.
