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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Winter’s Bone

The Academy expanded the number of Oscar nominees for best picture to 10 to ensure that a wider array of films would be represented, with the goal of raising viewership for the awards show telecast by including more popular fare like Inception and Toy Story 3. But this has also allowed a cousin from the backwoods to sneak into the world’s most glamorous party. That would be Winter’s Bone, a tiny film that won a grand jury prize at 2010’s Sundance Film Festival and now sits with four Oscar nominations.

It’s a remarkable achievement for a film whose setting and characters couldn’t seem more removed from Hollywood’s glittering boutiques and soirees. It tells the story of 17-year-old Ree Dolly, played by Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence, a girl from the Missouri Ozarks who embarks on an almost Odyssean journey to find her meth-cooking father, who has left Ree to take care of her two younger siblings and debilitated mother. But when Jessup skips bail, Ree learns that her absent dad has managed to compound her responsibilities by putting their house up for bond.

While a few films like Up In the Air and the Company Men have attempted to put a face on the great recession with limited success, Winter’s Bone immerses you in an almost post-apocalyptic economic desolation which began well before the Great Recession. People live in ramshackle cabins where the only options open to young people seem to be meth dealing, addiction, teen pregnancy or the military. As Ree crosses the hills searching for allies and information, she’s confronted by an entrenched patriarchy, distrust and a code of silence that have grown more terrifying with the dual scourges of drugs and hard times.

In many ways, but with less fanfare and megawatt star backing, Winter’s Bone seems to be taking the spot inhabited by the film Precious, which tells the story of an overweight, illiterate teen mother and was nominated for six Oscars in 2010. Both films transport audiences into the largely hidden alternate reality of America’s poor, where violence is all too common and burdens fall largely on the shoulders of young women forced into adulthood. It’s a world that is rarely seen on television or movie screens, and one that many who’ve seen it would rather forget.

Neither film asks for the audience’s pity, just that we understand that these worlds and people exist. This points to what I feel is one of film’s most significant and unique powers — the ability to create empathy with those whose lives and circumstances are nothing like our own. While our political system and the pundits that feed off it insist that we focus on the issues that divide us, the fact that thousands of film industry professionals, mostly based in America’s cities, chose Winter’s Bone as one of the year’s best films shows how film can bridge cultural, ethnic, and economic differences with the compelling stories of our fellow humans. Empathy is the best antidote for the ignorance, prejudice and demonization that has made America’s political climate so toxic.

What we need are opportunities to experience these stories, to remind ourselves of our common ties as humans. And films like Winter’s Bone remind us that those opportunities can often be found at the movies.

Winter’s Bone is rated R and is available on DVD now.