"Some families just can't get it together."

In Boone County, West Virginia there is a clan that has become known and even celebrated for its lawlessness. The White family, according to a captain in the sheriff's department, "all they got to do is to fuss, fight, and party." Hank Willams III calls them "the true rebels of the South."

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia is a documentary following the family over the course of a year. This is a family that has had a long history of violence and death. A trip to the cemetery as one of the older Whites shows the graves of those who had been murdered, killed themselves, or been in accidents is stunning.

It seems that all the death, the recognition of the cyclical nature of poverty, and the ways the system is set up for the mining companies led the whole family to retreat into nihilism. They reject any form of law or authority. Their lives are filled with drugs. They abuse the entitlement and welfare systems. Their idea is to "party their balls off." If they have to spend time in jail occasionally, that is just part of their lifestyle—and certainly carries no shame.

The matriarch of the family, Bertie Mae, is known locally as the miracle woman because she opened her home and raised perhaps dozens of children besides her own. She has five surviving children that we meet. Only one has left Boone County to find legitimate work. The others all live their lives constantly under the influence of one substance or another. The next generation is even wilder, it seems, spending more time in jail in large part because of more episodes of violence.

There are places where this could be seen as a celebration of lawlessness, but overall, it is a glimpse into the pathos of life that is deemed to have no meaning. There are times when we see the family doing what in some settings might be comic, but here it seems more shameful. One might think that people would put on their best face in front of a camera, but the slurred speech and constant drug use (even in the hospital right after delivering a baby) point to the extent to which these people—individually and collectively—demonstrate the fallacy of seeking happiness in this lifestyle. It might seem logical that doing whatever you feel like doing should make you happy. But as we see in this family, rejecting any cultural restraints just leads to a spiral into an abyss of sorrow.

Part of the saddest part of the film is seeing the children being reared in this environment and knowing the likelihood that this way of life will be passed onto yet another generation. Only now are the consequences of their actions beginning to catch up with them.

The film isn't totally without hope. One of the family members, after having a child taken away by Child Protective Services, enters rehab to try to straighten her life out. By film's end, she is still taking part in the program and making progress. But we know that it will be a long and difficult road—especially if she stays anywhere near her family.