It is so great to see Melissa Leo doing so well in her career right now. She gave us one of the greatest female detectives ever to grace television in “Homicide: Life On The Street,” and no other actress on the show (however good they were) could match what she had brought to that show. But then she got kicked off the show which was painful to hear about, especially considering that she was dealing with a lot of shit from an abusive ex-boyfriend who had become overly concerned about their son. She seemed to disappear for awhile, and then she came back in a variety of guest spots on all sorts of TV shows before reappearing one last time as Sgt. Kay Howard in “Homicide: The Movie.” But then she was in “21 Grams,” and people started to give her the attention she has deserved all along. Much praise went to Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts, but Melissa was every bit as compelling as Benicio’s wife who is ever so conflicted about her husband and what he has done.
Now, Melissa finally has a starring role in “Frozen River,” the movie that won this year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was directed by Courtney Hunt, and it marks a very strong directorial debut of a movie based on one of her short films. Melissa stars as Ray Eddy, a woman who lives in a trailer with her two boys in upstate New York. When the movie opens, her husband has left her and the kids alone, and who has also taken the family savings to most likely gamble with in Atlantic City. The first shot of Melissa sitting alone in her car in the cold winter with a cigarette in her hand and tears streaming down her face is a great study in film acting. Her face is far from the botox-ravaged faces we see in most major movies today, and it shows the hard knock life she has been through up to this point. Youth-obsessed Hollywood should pay attention to this because while they attempt to craft the perfect body, they forget about the importance and the power of acting.
Thanks to her gambling-addicted husband running off with all that she had saved, Ray does not have the money to pay for the new double-wide trailer home, and she is in danger of losing her $1,500 deposit. Her situation is desperate as she has little money for much of anything, be it food or the final payment on the new wide screen TV. This is especially tough on the kids who are basically forced to eat popcorn for dinner. Ray’s sole source of income is a crappy job at one of those everything for a dollar shops that is on every other block in the town we live in. She is desperate to be promoted to assistant manager, but her boss considers her a “short timer” and does not take her all that seriously. This despite the fact that she has worked at the store for over 2 years.
Then she comes across her husband’s car which has been taken by a young Indian woman named Lila played by Misty Upham. She said that her husband left on a bus and left the keys in the car. Ray goes to Misty’s trailer, which is only a fraction of the size of hers, to get her car back. However, Misty tells her that she knows of a guy who can buy the car and give her more for it than it is worth. But this turns out to be a ruse as we come to see that Misty is part of a ring of people who smuggle illegal aliens across the border and into Canada. Ray is at first disgusted at being a part of this and really wants nothing to do with this, but then she sees how much money there is to be made. She ends up coming back to Misty’s trailer to do another smuggling run with her. What these two are doing is clearly illegal, but it is impossible to be angry with them as we completely understand why they are doing this.
Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing the film in limited release, has promoted this film as a thriller. It is indeed a thriller, but at its core, it is really a movie about two very strong women who despite their cultural differences, are basically trying to get by and are desperately trying to keep their families together. We come to see that Lila has a baby boy that was “stolen” from her by her mother-in-law. It features two of the strongest roles for women that have been missing from many movies recently. These two roles are inhabited by very gifted actresses who give it their all. The movie feels almost like a small variation on “Thelma & Louise,” except for the fact that these women do not consider each other friends. But as the movie goes on, they move past the things that divide them and come to see who they really are.
Lila’s plight in life is also looked at in detail, as we see that she is trying to get a normal job, but her eye vision is not very good and keeps her from getting a decent job and keeps her from driving on a regular basis. She yearns to have her son in her life again, and to be done with smuggling as the police are on to her. Having Ray drive the car during their smuggling jobs helps because, as Lila points out, she is white. Lila comes across as a cold woman at the start of the movie, but that hard exterior melts away as we come to see her as a person thru Ray’s eyes instead of just another Indian. The laws of the Mohawk tribe in this film come across as pretty strict, and they have made Lila’s life tougher than it already is.
Courtney Hunt shot this movie on a Panasonic Vericam (high definition) in 24 days. The movie was shot on a bare bones budget, so any camerawork that has been seen by others as “amateurish” (that’s what I have been reading in reviews) should be forgiven. It gives the movie a strong sense of reality that makes the plight of these two women all the more vivid and unnerving. Being this poor is something I fear perhaps more than I should. How people manage to survive like this feels beyond me, especially in the cold and harsh New York winter.
Speaking of winter, the movie was shot in sub-zero temperatures in upstate New York, and that also adds to the already tough world that these two women have been left stranded in by their significant others. Well… Maybe they were not that significant. While watching this movie at Landmark Theaters in West Los Angeles (the seats there are so comfortable), I almost felt my teeth chattering. Watching the brutal weather these characters live through made me feel like I should have brought a sweater with me. I felt like I was freezing just watching this film. What is shown here feels so much colder than anything I saw in Werner Herzog’s documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World,” and that was shot in Antarctica near the South Pole! I can see myself standing out in this weather and saying to myself:
“So this is what it feels like to be a human ice cube!”
Everything about this movie feels so down to earth, and it makes all that goes on in the film all the more believable and all the more frightening. This is not a movie caught up in some fantasy world where everything will end on a happy note. What these characters go through is terribly real as they live in a world that is becoming more increasingly corporate and which continues to squeeze out the middle class. The movie questions what you would do if you were in this situation. How would you try to survive when you have no family outside of your own to rely on? How far would you go in breaking the law? How far would you go to keep your family together? These are questions that are also posed to the two women at the center of the story. While we might tell them to make a more “honest” living, you cannot help but wonder if you could do the same when you are living by the skin of your teeth.
Melissa Leo is a superlative actress who gives her all in this role, and she is also an actress who is so refreshingly free of vanity. She is not afraid of making herself look completely unglamorous in a movie, and the young film actors of today with their Noxzema clean faces need to take note of this. Melissa is able to convey raw emotion without saying a word as she shows in the movie’s opening scene. She goes for the gut of the role and never exhibits any faked emotions throughout. I hope and pray that she is remembered at Oscar time with a nomination that she should have gotten for her work in “21 Grams.” I can’t even think of another actress who could inhabit this character the way she does.
Misty Upham also does great work here as Lila, and she does a believable transition to what seems like a cold hearted woman to a woman who struggles through a heartbreakingly unfair world. The laws of her reservation constrict her almost fully, and she is not really allowed to lead as normal a life as possible. She finds that the one person who she thinks she cannot trust is actually the one who sticks up for her in the end. The last shot of her in the movie with Ray’s kids is a beautiful moment of unity that the movie strived hard for to get to.
Other excellent performances to be found in the movie come from Charlie McDermott who plays Ray’s oldest boy, TJ. When his dad is out of the picture, he takes on the added responsibility of looking after his little brother who cannot comprehend the fact that his dad abandoned the family. The things he does to help his family are foolish, not to mention seriously illegal. The blow torch he uses throughout the movie was a gift from his dad, and it becomes TJ’s closest and only real link to him throughout the film. Charlie never makes this character into your typical teenage kid, but instead gives us a kid who is forced to grow up a lot sooner than he should.
Courtney Hunt makes a strong impression here as a director, but a writer as well (she wrote the screenplay). It will be interesting to see where her career goes from here. She has a strong vision of what to show in her film, and she also writes great parts for women and men as this film shows, and that’s something I would like to see more of in the future.
The world of independent films took a huge hit last year, and seeing all these specialty film companies and New Line Cinema by the corporate world intent on remaking every film ever made is very depressing. “Frozen River” offers us the opportunity to help reenergize the independent film world, and reminds us of how much we need this in the world of cinema today. It is definitely one of the more exciting and enthralling films you can hope to see this year.
***1/2 out of ****
Now, Melissa finally has a starring role in “Frozen River,” the movie that won this year’s Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was directed by Courtney Hunt, and it marks a very strong directorial debut of a movie based on one of her short films. Melissa stars as Ray Eddy, a woman who lives in a trailer with her two boys in upstate New York. When the movie opens, her husband has left her and the kids alone, and who has also taken the family savings to most likely gamble with in Atlantic City. The first shot of Melissa sitting alone in her car in the cold winter with a cigarette in her hand and tears streaming down her face is a great study in film acting. Her face is far from the botox-ravaged faces we see in most major movies today, and it shows the hard knock life she has been through up to this point. Youth-obsessed Hollywood should pay attention to this because while they attempt to craft the perfect body, they forget about the importance and the power of acting.
Thanks to her gambling-addicted husband running off with all that she had saved, Ray does not have the money to pay for the new double-wide trailer home, and she is in danger of losing her $1,500 deposit. Her situation is desperate as she has little money for much of anything, be it food or the final payment on the new wide screen TV. This is especially tough on the kids who are basically forced to eat popcorn for dinner. Ray’s sole source of income is a crappy job at one of those everything for a dollar shops that is on every other block in the town we live in. She is desperate to be promoted to assistant manager, but her boss considers her a “short timer” and does not take her all that seriously. This despite the fact that she has worked at the store for over 2 years.
Then she comes across her husband’s car which has been taken by a young Indian woman named Lila played by Misty Upham. She said that her husband left on a bus and left the keys in the car. Ray goes to Misty’s trailer, which is only a fraction of the size of hers, to get her car back. However, Misty tells her that she knows of a guy who can buy the car and give her more for it than it is worth. But this turns out to be a ruse as we come to see that Misty is part of a ring of people who smuggle illegal aliens across the border and into Canada. Ray is at first disgusted at being a part of this and really wants nothing to do with this, but then she sees how much money there is to be made. She ends up coming back to Misty’s trailer to do another smuggling run with her. What these two are doing is clearly illegal, but it is impossible to be angry with them as we completely understand why they are doing this.
Sony Pictures Classics, which is distributing the film in limited release, has promoted this film as a thriller. It is indeed a thriller, but at its core, it is really a movie about two very strong women who despite their cultural differences, are basically trying to get by and are desperately trying to keep their families together. We come to see that Lila has a baby boy that was “stolen” from her by her mother-in-law. It features two of the strongest roles for women that have been missing from many movies recently. These two roles are inhabited by very gifted actresses who give it their all. The movie feels almost like a small variation on “Thelma & Louise,” except for the fact that these women do not consider each other friends. But as the movie goes on, they move past the things that divide them and come to see who they really are.
Lila’s plight in life is also looked at in detail, as we see that she is trying to get a normal job, but her eye vision is not very good and keeps her from getting a decent job and keeps her from driving on a regular basis. She yearns to have her son in her life again, and to be done with smuggling as the police are on to her. Having Ray drive the car during their smuggling jobs helps because, as Lila points out, she is white. Lila comes across as a cold woman at the start of the movie, but that hard exterior melts away as we come to see her as a person thru Ray’s eyes instead of just another Indian. The laws of the Mohawk tribe in this film come across as pretty strict, and they have made Lila’s life tougher than it already is.
Courtney Hunt shot this movie on a Panasonic Vericam (high definition) in 24 days. The movie was shot on a bare bones budget, so any camerawork that has been seen by others as “amateurish” (that’s what I have been reading in reviews) should be forgiven. It gives the movie a strong sense of reality that makes the plight of these two women all the more vivid and unnerving. Being this poor is something I fear perhaps more than I should. How people manage to survive like this feels beyond me, especially in the cold and harsh New York winter.
Speaking of winter, the movie was shot in sub-zero temperatures in upstate New York, and that also adds to the already tough world that these two women have been left stranded in by their significant others. Well… Maybe they were not that significant. While watching this movie at Landmark Theaters in West Los Angeles (the seats there are so comfortable), I almost felt my teeth chattering. Watching the brutal weather these characters live through made me feel like I should have brought a sweater with me. I felt like I was freezing just watching this film. What is shown here feels so much colder than anything I saw in Werner Herzog’s documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World,” and that was shot in Antarctica near the South Pole! I can see myself standing out in this weather and saying to myself:
“So this is what it feels like to be a human ice cube!”
Everything about this movie feels so down to earth, and it makes all that goes on in the film all the more believable and all the more frightening. This is not a movie caught up in some fantasy world where everything will end on a happy note. What these characters go through is terribly real as they live in a world that is becoming more increasingly corporate and which continues to squeeze out the middle class. The movie questions what you would do if you were in this situation. How would you try to survive when you have no family outside of your own to rely on? How far would you go in breaking the law? How far would you go to keep your family together? These are questions that are also posed to the two women at the center of the story. While we might tell them to make a more “honest” living, you cannot help but wonder if you could do the same when you are living by the skin of your teeth.
Melissa Leo is a superlative actress who gives her all in this role, and she is also an actress who is so refreshingly free of vanity. She is not afraid of making herself look completely unglamorous in a movie, and the young film actors of today with their Noxzema clean faces need to take note of this. Melissa is able to convey raw emotion without saying a word as she shows in the movie’s opening scene. She goes for the gut of the role and never exhibits any faked emotions throughout. I hope and pray that she is remembered at Oscar time with a nomination that she should have gotten for her work in “21 Grams.” I can’t even think of another actress who could inhabit this character the way she does.
Misty Upham also does great work here as Lila, and she does a believable transition to what seems like a cold hearted woman to a woman who struggles through a heartbreakingly unfair world. The laws of her reservation constrict her almost fully, and she is not really allowed to lead as normal a life as possible. She finds that the one person who she thinks she cannot trust is actually the one who sticks up for her in the end. The last shot of her in the movie with Ray’s kids is a beautiful moment of unity that the movie strived hard for to get to.
Other excellent performances to be found in the movie come from Charlie McDermott who plays Ray’s oldest boy, TJ. When his dad is out of the picture, he takes on the added responsibility of looking after his little brother who cannot comprehend the fact that his dad abandoned the family. The things he does to help his family are foolish, not to mention seriously illegal. The blow torch he uses throughout the movie was a gift from his dad, and it becomes TJ’s closest and only real link to him throughout the film. Charlie never makes this character into your typical teenage kid, but instead gives us a kid who is forced to grow up a lot sooner than he should.
Courtney Hunt makes a strong impression here as a director, but a writer as well (she wrote the screenplay). It will be interesting to see where her career goes from here. She has a strong vision of what to show in her film, and she also writes great parts for women and men as this film shows, and that’s something I would like to see more of in the future.
The world of independent films took a huge hit last year, and seeing all these specialty film companies and New Line Cinema by the corporate world intent on remaking every film ever made is very depressing. “Frozen River” offers us the opportunity to help reenergize the independent film world, and reminds us of how much we need this in the world of cinema today. It is definitely one of the more exciting and enthralling films you can hope to see this year.
***1/2 out of ****
Awesome review.
I cannot wait to see this when it opens here.