FROZEN RIVER

FILM:  FROZEN RIVER/2008

  

If you love hardscrabble reality, you’ll find this indie a gem.  The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008, FROZEN RIVER exposes us to the almost-impossile fight for survival in a trailer-park wasteland (Messina, New York) near the river that separates the state from the Canadian border.  We come face to face with Ray Eddie (Melissa Leo) in extreme closeup.  She is middle aged and looks like forty miles of bad road.  The collector has shown up for the balloon payment which would have brought her family one step closer to a new double-wide trailer.  The money had been there for the payment, but Ray’s husband is missing and so is the money.  Left with two boys to support, she realizes that  her husband has resumed his compulsive gambling and the money is gone.  She goes in search of him at the Mohawk bingo parlor, finds out that he is not there, but sees his car being stolen by an American Indian woman, Lila Littlejohn.  She follows Lila to her humble camper and demands the car back.  Lila refuses and is threatened by Ray at gunpoint.  When Lila hesitates, Ray shoots into the camper.  Lila now says that she has a buyer for the car and can get $2,000 for it.  The buyer, however, is across the frozen river in Canada.  She claims that this is in Mohawk territory on both sides of the river and they are not subject to U.S. law, that business is conducted in this way all the time.  When they get to the Canadian buyer, however, the deal has changed.  The “buyer” tells Ray to pop the trunk and two illegals are to be smuggled into the United States.  Outraged but needy, Ray agrees and collects the money and delivers the illegals to the other side.  Lila has no qualms and this is just a business transaction for the women.  Ray is assured that as long as a white woman is driving into the U.S., they will not be challenged.  This turns out to be true.  Although the due date for the balloon pay ment is past due, Ray rushes to the sales trailer with the payment in hand and arranges for delivery.  She returns to her part-time job at a dollar store and asks to be put on full time.  The manager refuses.  She still needs money for her family.  With visible resignation she goes back to Lila for another ‘job.’  Lila has problems of her own.  A very young widow, Lila’s mother-in-law has taken possession of Lila’s baby and she needs to accumulate money to make a decent home for her child in order to reclaim her.  Ray has set aside her distaste for breaking the law.  She is just too desparate.  On this particular trip, though, she is upset to learn that she is smuggling a young Pakistani couple with a duffel bag.  She balks, remembering 9/ll and clinging to her instinctive patriotism.  The duffel bag is placed in the backseat, the Pakistanis are in the trunk.  As they travel across the frozen river, Ray worries that the duffel bag might contain explosives or poison gas.  She insists that they stop and leave the bag on the ice.  When they get to the Pakistani-managed motel, the money is paid and the couple emerges from the trunk, they realize that the left duffel bag actually contained a baby.  The couple is frantic and Ray and Lila realize that they must go back to the place where they left the bag.  Lila examines the baby and it appears dead.  She seems aloof, dispassionate, but Ray is frantic.  She starts administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but seemingly to no avail.  Since Ray is driving, she demands that Lila hold the child.  Reluctantly she does so.  After a couple of minutes, she realizes that the baby is alive.  Both mothers are bonded momentarily in the amazing realization.  On the way back into the U.S., though, Ray is pulled over by a trooper.  Both women are terrified, but are relieved to learn that the pullover was merely for a burned-out tail light.  They return the baby  to the overjoyed parents.  Things go downhill at this point, though.  The same trooper shows up at Ray’s dilapidated trailer on Christmas morning.  He’s there to advise Ray that her Mohawk passenger is a smuggler.  Ray claims that Lila has merely done some babysitting for her.  I won’t spoil the movie’s ending, but must say that it is very pragmatic and touching, without being saccharine.

 

The screenplay is written and directed by Courtney Hunt.  In our disastrous economy it is harder to feel smug superiority to these women.  The reality is getting closer that we might have to walk a mile in their shoes.