Stark Love

In the impenetrable isolation of the Great Smoky Mountains, Rob Warwick represents a dangerous anomaly: he is a hillbilly who can read. While his community lives by a primitive, almost animalistic social code where women are mere beasts of burden, Rob consumes tales of medieval chivalry and dreams of a dignified life. His ambition to attend college and rescue his love, Barbara, from a cycle of domestic servitude sets him on a collision course with his father, Jason. Jason Warwick is a man of iron and apathy, viewing his son’s literacy as a weakness and women as replaceable property. When the death of Rob’s mother leaves a vacuum in the household, Jason’s solution is to simply purchase a new wife, targeting the very woman Rob intends to save. This is a stark, ethnographic exploration of the friction between emerging enlightenment and the stubborn, brutal traditions of a secluded American wilderness.