Powerful acting by Melissa Leo and Misty Upham and a setting in a little known microcosm of international intrigue, “Frozen River” tells a fascinating story that keeps up the pace from start to finish
Veteran indie heroine Melissa Leo (“21 Grams,” “Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”) teams up with startling newcomer Misty Upham to stir up a storm on the frozen Canadian Border in upstate New York. Known for little other than the worst weather this side of Moscow, the Mohawk Indian reservation straddling the US/Canadian border makes for some interesting questions, and adventure, in this thriller about crime, punishment and winning the hard way.
The setting is an illegal alien smuggling operation on the Mohawk Indian reservation. The last leg of a complex route to the USA, the trip across the border is expedited by the fact that neither US nor Canuck immigration officials have any jurisdiction on the reservation. Although the film doesn’t go into the technical legal details of what would seem to be a blank check for smugglers, the scenario seems somewhat reasonable and sets the stage for fascinating performances by Leo and Upham.
Melissa Leo plays a familiar part, she is the hard scrabble single mom clawing and scratching her way through another day of survival dogged by a gambling addict husband and living in a fire-trap of a rotting mobile home. As in some of her other films, she is almost too real to be real. Her faced seems to have been treated with some kind of negative make-up that shows more natural signs of age than are actually there to begin with. She doesn’t so much as spit out her words as she says each one as sort of a final death rattle; as if it is her last word and she is thankful for it.
Misty Upham plays a Mohawk native who chooses her words well. The part is well-written and is very realistic without falling into a pit of Native American stereotypes. The fact is, Indians have little to say to whites of any class, upper or lower. They have their own lives and their own ways of looking at things and they have long since learned better to expect whites to understand. They are independent and dependent at the same time. Upham pulls off this fairly difficult character act with excellent style.
Shot in 24 days with a Sony Vericam by Reed Morano in upstate New York, at the Canadian border, this film was made in what has to be the worst filming conditions ever, with the possible exception of “March of the Penguins” or perhaps one of Werner Herzog’s early Amazon adventures. The scenes are made almost entirely without artificial sets and many of them are doubtlessly set in the absolute reality of ultra-rural ultra-low income life styles. The pictures resonate with a flat, gray tonality that is cold so deep you can’t see an end to it. After Ray is drawn into her first trip onto the frozen lake in her car the ice, the slush, the snow, the sky, the lake, the car and the faces of the two women are nothing but more shades of cold gray than you could imagine. The ice is cold, but the future across that lake is and the future for two women is even colder. It is the yawning gates of hell in a Yukon gold rush poem by Robert Service.
This film tells a difficult but redeeming story on at least three levels. The first story is about women making their way in a man’s world by putting their differences aside. The second story is that, in fact, this works for men as well. If cultures put their differences aside we would get a lot farther than we have gotten to date. The third story is about single moms in America and their will to survive. There is no greater force at work in America today.
All-in-all a commendable effort by Courtney Hunt, Melissa Leo, Misty Upham and the rest of the cast and crew in making an honest and compelling film on a frugal budget.
MPAA: Rated R for some language
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