It wasn’t that long ago that Hollywood was concerning itself with the Bush administration and the war on terror. Nearly all of those films were critical and financial failures. With the economy going down the toilets, it’s not much of a surprise that the movie industry has turned its eye towards the disenfranchised. Critics have gladly coined the phrase, ‘new American realism,’ as the label de jour in regards to the new movement defined by films such as Shotgun Stories and Snow Angels. 2008 saw a deluge of pictures with similar themes with the best of which being Chop Shop, The Visitor, Wendy and Lucy, and Frozen River.
First-time filmmaker Courtney Hunt expanded Frozen River from a short film she made and scored in a big way, winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Hunt’s leading lady, Melissa Leo, was also equally lauded for her performance, receiving nominations at the Oscars and SAGs and a win at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Leo plays Ray Eddy, a struggling mom living in rural upstate New York near the Canadian border. She works a menial part-time job at a dollar store, has two sons and feeds them popcorn and Tang because that’s all she can afford. Her wants are simple, a new double-wide trailer with better insulation. However, Ray’s husband has absconded with the down payment and disappeared, likely to gamble away his wife’s hard-earned savings. Searching more for her husband’s car rather than the man himself, Ray runs into Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a Native American living on the Mohawk reservation. She’s something of an outcast to both the whites and her own people. Like Ray, Lila has had a rough go of it, partly due to circumstances and partly due to her own foolish choices. Her husband is dead and her mother-in-law has custody of her son. She’s near-sighted and too stubborn to get glasses. She can’t hold down a job either because of that same stubbornness. Lila ropes Ray into smuggling illegal immigrants out of Canada across the frozen St. Lawrence River which has iced over into a makeshift road. It’s clear to anyone that these immigrants only have sweatshops and brothels in their future, but neither Ray nor Lila seem to know or care. But, they’re willing to do anything for their kids.
Leo definitely earned the accolades she was showered with. Her portrayal of Ray Eddy is a female equivalent to Mickey Rourke’s Randy the Ram and I mean that in the nicest way possible. The craggily lines eroded across her face belying her world-weary desperation. While Leo got the lion’s share of attention, Misty Upham’s performance shouldn’t be ignored as she turns us around on a character that should have been entirely unsympathetic. The rest of the cast is filled with unknowns though some might recognize character actor Mark Boone Junior from Memento and Batman Begins.
For the first two acts, Frozen River is an intimate character study due to the documentary style shooting of Hunt that places us right into the lives of people who’ve fallen through the cracks. The film transforms into a taut thriller in the third act as Ray and Lila go for the last, big score. Frozen River is one of those rare films that lacks the artifices present in other productions and makes you forget you’re watching a movie.
Rating: *** 1/2
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