Winters Bone

Winter’s Bone

We start with a shot of Dolly washing her face in the sink and her brother and sister playing on the sofa. We then get a shot of Dolly cooking some food by cutting up some potatoes and putting them in the pan. The room that they are in is very cluttered and dimly lit, The only source of light is coming out of the window which has a red curtain over it. All of the things that Dolly is doing are something that we would expect a mother to do. This isn’t the case because Dolly is doing it. From the start of the film we can clearly see that Dolly will be doing all of the work and is the main mother and or father figure to her brother and sister. Dolly then opens the fridge and pulls out a tub of food that is for the dog . She then opens it and sniffs inside it and says “Better than nothing”. This is food for the dog, later on in the film we find out that they haven't fed their horse for 4 days. There is a clear pattern of lack of food. Even the food that Dolly is putting on is very plain and sparse, only potatoes. Dollys sister then takes the dog food outside and the dog is chained to a pole outside their house. The dogs tail is wagging and the dog looks to be very excited to be eating, this may be the case with the horse. This may be the dogs only source of food for a while. The dog's rib cage is clearly visible which is another indicator that the dog doesn’t get fed as often as he should.

One of the next shots is through a mirror showing Dolly brushing her mum’s hair. The mirror has a large hairline crack in the middle of it. The line is cutting through Dolly. I think that this represents the split personality that she has. She aspires to be a part of the army and be a mother and or father figure for her brother and sister. In this shot we see that Dolly is brushing her mom's hair. This backs up my point that she wants to be a mother and a caring figure because she is doing something that a mother would do to their child. We then get a mid shot of her brother walking in with a dog in his hands. Dolly asks “who’s this?” Her brother responds with “peanut butter” Dolly says back “where did you find peanut butter?” The brother responds with “in the woods” Dolly strokes it in his hands. This shot is the same shot that we left off at. It clearly looks like Dolly is the image of a mother figure, she is taller than everyone else in the room and doing things motherly while her Mum is in the room. We then get a tracking shot of Dolly with her brother and her sister walking down a path. Dolly is helping her sister spell house. Her sister is struggling and Dolly is helped her. Her sister at this age should know how to spell. This shows that she isn’t educated and that it’s hard to teach when Dolly has lots of things to do as well as teach her brother and sister.