Director Debra Granik made quite a splash with her acclaimed 2004 effort Down to the Bone. She’s going to be making an even bigger one with her follow-up release Winter’s Bone. The best film I saw during this year’s Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and, better than that, the best cinematic experience I’ve had so far this year, this is a marvelous piece of visceral and kinetic art that blew me out of my theatre seat.

Director Debra Granik on the set of Winter's Bone © Roadside Attractions

So it was a bit of a no-brainer that I was going to want to speak with Granik, recently named the winner of the 2010 Golden Space Needle Award for Best Director, on her trip to SIFF. Sitting down with her at the downtown W Hotel proved to be every bit the delight I hoped it would be, the filmmaker happily willing to dissect Winter’s Bone down to the very last detail.

“We never knew we could make [Winter’s Bone] into a movie,” says the director at the start of our conversation. “The woman I collaborated with, Anne Rosellini, who is also a Seattle native, neither of us had any connection to this area [Missouri Ozark region], to this culture. We were coastal people. Though we loved the book, thought we’d been craving a female hero that we could just sort of melt into, relax with and feel good about, [someone] that half way through we would not feel humiliated for or would be proven to be incompetent, neither of us were sure we could pull this off.”

The ‘her’ she’s talking about is main character Ree Dolly, brilliantly portrayed by up and coming starlet Jennifer Lawrence, the 2010 Golden Space Needle award-winner for Best Actress. She’s the catalyst that drives the film forward, her search for her missing father the singular constant around which all else happening in both the film and Daniel Woodrell’s original novel revolves.

“We were just really rooting for [Ree],” Granik continues, “and then by extension started caring about her family. We loved that you could have a super-gnarly uncle [Teardrop, portrayed in the film by veteran character actor John Hawkes] who, yeah, has these chemical dependency issues but who also has these other traits in him that have meant something to Ree over time.”

“It was just the complexity of seeing a family full of ‘ands,’ but it was set in a different sort of setting. We [Anne and I] know our families and all their shenanigans [but] this was a family that had difficult sort of people who can act very badly at times as well as people in it that care about everything most of care about; what it means to try and stay together, what it means to have a core thing in your life like a house and what it would mean if that got taken away.”

Granik’s passion for the project is palpable as she speaks. She squirms in her chair and moves her hands about wildly as she does her best to bring every one of her points home. I can tell as we’re sitting there that this movie has done something to her, touched fibers deep inside, and I start to believe it is that overabundance of fervor that has made the film such a sterling success.

“This is an old story in the United States,” she exclaims. “Foreclosure is an old story, a painfully old story. And then, a person who is willing to fight is also the other side of our American storytelling tradition. It’s like the hero of a Western, and we were just pleased she could be in a girl’s body, that this sort of hero could be inside that incarnation, if you will.”

“Daniel had written a strong female character, we didn’t amp her up. [Ree] was written as a shit-kicking kind of person with a lot of moxie. But did we think we could do it? Did we think we could pull the movie off? Only if we went down there [to Missouri]. Only if we made sure to keep it as authentic as possible. I came from a very different suburban background so it was imperative that we go down there. It was imperative that Daniel meet us and that we get to ask him questions. It was imperative to keep his story he had written authentic.”

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone © Roadside Attractions

Authenticity oozes from every pore of the film, so if Granik’s chief goal during filming was to make sure and keep things as real as possible to say she’s succeeded would be something of an understatement. But finding that level of accuracy does not come easy and it does not come without help, the filmmaker feeling extremely lucky to have had the help she did in making her film come to life.

“The sheriff down there was extremely important,” she explains. “We actually came across a really compassionate and helpful sheriff who was so exhausted and tormented from having to deal with his peers that he went to High School with who had gotten caught up in the life. Crystal Meth is so particularly violent in the way it harms people, to encounter people you’ve known since childhood and to have this drug come blasting out of the margins it’s like give us Moonshine, give us Marijuana, give us anything but Meth; that’s the sort of reality this sheriff was dealing with.”

“But we had to have guidance the whole way, we couldn’t be unsupervised at all and that’s what made this sheriff so incredibly helpful. We can’t knock on those doors. We can’s show up on people’s porches. There is a term ‘city slickers,’ and to see people dressed in black walking down your holler, which is like the size of a football field and they would see us walking in from like a half a mile away, it’s like, ‘What might you want?’ ‘What are you doing here?’ And so it was good to have someone [they knew] step in and tell them who we are, ask if they’d read the book and then find out if we could come back for another visit and discuss it.”

“It had to be a collaboration where we relied on the people who had the lived-in experience of living in the Ozarks. What we had was the filmmaking skills. The production skills. We had the hardware and the means of production. We had the staff. Meanwhile, all texture, color and accuracy had to be found there [in the Ozarks]. It had to come from those who actually lived there.”

Yet the filmmaking team always had to keep the eye on the fact they were making a narrative feature, not a documentary, although that wasn’t always easy. “The research always feels a little bit like [your making a doc],’ says Granik, “and, oh my God, the desire to simultaneously make a documentary is definitely there. In fact, some of that spillover research that in some sense is more traditional documentary style research does make it into the movie.”

Switching gears we turn our attentions back towards the film’s heroine Ree Dolly. Faced with an impossible choice; follow the familial code, do nothing and her family loses their home or start asking questions in search of a missing – and presumably dead – father and risk her own life in the process; the character goes on a stark and terrifying journey into the unknown that’s downright mesmerizing.

As Ree appears in nearly every scene of the film, and as her journey is so complex and requires such staggering emotional nuance, I wonder if Granik ever had any reservations that young Lawrence, previously seen in films like The Burning Plain and Garden Party, could pull the roll off. “We didn’t know she could pull it off,” she answers honestly. “We knew she was giving a very strong audition and we knew she’d be willing to work with us – she made that nakedly clear – but we didn’t know.”

“But she understood the character. It was like she was saying, I am down for this. I understand it will be arduous [but] I’ve read the script carefully and I would really be challenged by this roll. I would like to do it. On top of that tenacity, the fact she came from Kentucky meant a lot to me and out of the gate the way she speaks was just so lyrical. It was very beautiful, and I came to calling [her vocals] just a beautiful way of pronouncing American English.”

“There are locations around the country that, to this day, despite all the satellite dishes and despite all the incoming information where there are still spices and nuances in the language. To my ear, [Jennifer] had that. She had a regional affinity. She didn’t come from the same circumstances as Ree Dolly but she comes from a region of the country where she had to travel from town to town she had seen and been witness to [similar people] as Ree and to Missouri and Kentucky culture.”

Was that enough, however? Did just the sound of her voice, her cultural background and her driven commitment to the roll itself be enough for Granik to fully believe Lawrence would be able to own to film and the character as completely and as self-assuredly as she does? “I knew she was capable, but were we ultimately wowed?” asks the director. “Yes. We were.”

“I always think it is such an incredible task and if you’re on a set the whole crew is this big team and they’ve all read the script to the point its been dissected. Then live she and John are doing a scene and you’re actually getting into it even though you know it [the script] so well. That’s the test. It’s a test showing how the fiction is being made rich. Made 3-D for you.”

Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes in Winter's Bone © Roadside Attractions

“There is something that those actors are doing that is not on the page. It’s like chess moves. He does this. She dares to ask again. He warns her warn more time. She crosses the line. What’s he going to do? No one on the production side knows every move that an actor is going to make and the fact that they could get into it so deeply meant that they didn’t always know. [Jennifer] doesn’t know if she is going to stare [John] down every time or whether she is going avert her eyes, so it was inherent suspense for us watching as the filming went on and they kept creating these characters and giving them life. We knew we were being treated to something captivating.”

“But that’s just John and Jen. I can ask them to do variations. I can ask them on the fourth try I can say, this time, don’t let him see your eyes. Let’s see what happens. But that’s what I can do. I can do small things. Jen and John are coming with [the performances].”

As great as the actors are, it is the film’s unflinching take on its subject matter which ultimately puts it over the top. Winter’s Bone refuses to pull its punches, does not lighten its tone for a single solitary instant. Even the humorous moments are tinged with a dark uncertainty, the danger inherent in Ree’s quest for answers a dark mist every character that takes part in it must ultimately attempt to find their own way through.

“Dale Dickey, who plays Merab, at one point she said this was really ungodly, it was harder than she thought it would be,” comments Granik. “She had not really had to wound another person in a film, and there were moments where we wondered how much of that we needed to go through. Yet in felt like within the code of this family that after they’d given three warnings they would show it in another way. Of course, in my mind they weren’t going to kill her, they just needed [Ree] to stop what it was she was doing because they didn’t want the law involved. But the audience has to question. They have to wonder. If we’d flinched or pulled back I’m not sure they would have.”

“Did I struggle with that? Absolutely. So did the actors. Is it out of my zip code? Yeah. Are what heroes have to do in fairy tales to prove their determination or their commitment when they have to retrieve something from the woods and bring it back would that be a discomfort to me? Yes.”

“But that’s what Daniel’s story is, and when you take on a [project] that’s willing to mine and look at the scary there is a kind of commitment you have to have. Taken halfway those people that respond to suspense and mystery they’re going to feel like they haven’t gotten that run, that place in the imagination that thrills them, that can be satisfying or cathartic. Scary to me, and this isn’t a genre I feel comfortable in, but if the story is willing to go there than as filmmakers I think we have a commitment to go there, too.”

I find it intriguing that Granik was so uneasy with much of the subject matter, that making the film has forced her so far outside of her comfort zone. At the same time, the realization that this discomfort forced both her and her filmmaking team to take their respective games to a new level was just as apparent. The level of collaboration she had with her crew is apparent in every frame, no sound out of place, no musical queue uncertain and no move of the camera or look of the production design feeling dishonest.

“You’re one of the first people to realize just how much the filmmaking process is collaborative,” she says with a smile. “Certain sounds trigger a primal sensation in all humans, we haven’t lost that. As hooked up and as wired as we are there are certain sounds that unhinge us, the howl of the wind or a distant rumble, and that means that we know the elements are powerful. It takes a team to make that happen, and the collaborative nature of showing how it can be very uncomfortable to be a lone traveler in the woods traveling great distances was a very important one.”

For those unfamiliar with the book one of the major discoveries here is going to be just how much control women have over what is taking place within their households. While the men are supposedly the ones running the business, it is their wives that are left to lay down the law. They are complicated figures, all of them trying to find the best way to do what is right while also doing what is best for the family as a whole, the two not always going hand-in-hand. Ree challenges that authority to a point, yet in a roundabout way her journey for answers brings her closer to being a part of the familial inner circle then she probably intended.

“These are complicated women,” remarks Granik. “They are not clichés. Ree feels very responsible for taking care of the siblings under her care, the idea of helping to perpetuate life. With the three sisters, it’s the idea that these females really would have the power, would be the ones in control. They’re witches brew in this case is to teach [Ree] some sort of lesson but to also in the end potentially help her.”

Dale Dickey in Winter's Bone © Roadside Attractions

“Those elements were all in [Daniel’s] mind. It was like he took pleasure in taking this long tour through how women energy has been done over the [generations] when it has been done interestingly. He made a nod to them or a wink to them, if you will, and so I feel like it all started there and [Annie] and I just did our best to keep those ideas and themes in place within our script.”

Now, with the film finally going into general release and after winning major awards at both Sundance in January and here at SIFF in June, it goes without saying Granik is hopeful her film will be able to catch on with paying audiences the same way it has at festivals. “Our hope is that it will have a life throughout the Summer,” she says candidly. “We want to the niche for diverse filmmaking in the big picture of American film culture continue. No one needs us to be a [box office] buster of any kind; we just want to be sustainable. We want to be a sustainable, quiet film where [audiences] are getting the reward of seeing two great American actors where it feels good, it feels luscious, it feels luscious to see [them] giving such strong Americana performances. That’s what we want.”