A talkative crowd quickly filled the seats at the Staller Center Main Stage for the showing of Winter’s Bone, an indie-esque film released earlier this year. At 9:30 p.m. on November 5, the crowd quieted and very few seats were left as the lights dimmed, leading to the opening scene of children playing in the yard of a run down house in a rural area.
Winter’s Bone is a movie about a 17-year-old girl, Ree Dolly, who keeps her family together on very little money. However, when the police show up and tell her that her absent father used the family’s house as collateral for bail and that the family will lose the house unless he shows up for his court date, she goes on a search to find what happened to her drug dealer father. The search puts her life in serious danger that she chooses to ignore in order to save her family.
Anne Katz, a retired member of the community and Stony Brook University alumni, called herself a “friend of the Staller Center” and attended the event with her husband, a university faculty member. The couple attended the event because of the reviews they had read about the movie. Both were excited to see it.
The crowd was highly attentive during the movie, reacting to the different interactions and situations between characters and laughing at the lines delivered by the actors for comic relief from the serious tone and plotline of the film.
The main character went through a lot of struggles throughout the film in order to save the house and keep her family together. She endured being abducted and attacked by members of the society that wanted her to stop looking for her father for fear of what might happen to them. She was brought to a swamp where her father’s body was floating in the middle of the night in order to saw off his hands and bring them to the police to prove that he is dead and not skipping her court date. With each obstacle faced, she overcame for the sake of her mother and sibling’s well being. In the end, she was able to save her family and keep the house.
Harriet Karpf, a retired member of the community, also attended the movie shown before Winter’s Bone at the Staller Center Main Stage, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, at 7 pm. Commenting on the main character, Karpf said “What is sad is she will never leave [the town]” and she “gave up her future for her family.”
Karpf also said that Winter’s Bone was “very well done” and “enjoyable” despite the fact that the movie is a “sad commentary on our society and how it continues.”
Katz agreed, saying the movie was “terrific.”
The Staller Center frequently shows movies on Friday nights; tickets can be purchased at the ticket office the night of the show. A list of the movies to be shown in the future can be found at http://stallercenter.com/movies.
