Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe
Yesterday evening I had an unpleasant realisation… I had completely forgotten to watch Courtney Hunt’s much lauded debut feature, Frozen River. This was, of course, unacceptable. The last ‘promising’ female screenwriter to demand the attention of the Oscars was Diablo Cody, but on the assumption that the Oscar’s couldn’t be so disastrously wrong two years in a row, I decided to head over to the Odeon Panton Street to watch Frozen River.
At University I was forced to consider the importance of the ‘performance space’ to the experience of seeing a play or film. There is no doubt that the chosen location for a film’s exhibition – be it a living room, the local Multiplex, a rundown family theatre, or an archway near London Bridge – makes for a unique viewing experience. I had never actually entered the Odeon Panton Street (the one hidden behind the Odeon West End next door to the Odeon Leicester Square… monopoly anyone?) but I had always found it unassuming and, by extension, strangely alluring.
Now that I have seen a film there, I can promise you that it is the most disappointing cinema in London. I am still gob-smacked that they are allowed to charge the same £10 entry fee as the Odeon Leicester Square (a juggernaut of a screen) for the pleasure of sitting in the most cramped screening room in London, with a screen smaller than most home cinemas. At one point a person stood up three rows in front of me and blocked the entire screen. Screen 3 is literally a converted attic space. If you are ever choosing where to watch a film… avoid the Odeon Panton Street at all costs!
Fortunately, these unacceptable surroundings did not take away from what is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest films of the year. I simply cannot comprehend why this film didn’t do well at the Oscars. Oh wait… I just remembered the embarrassing bout of Slumdog fever that plagued this year’s festivities.
After the curtains had opened (it didn't take long... the screen was barely wider than my arm-span! Ok, I will douse my bitterness) the film began with a series of beautiful shots of upstate New York. This is the only time in the entire film that you are ever really aware of the cinematography. But it is always there: effortlessly matching the tone of the film and providing an extra layer of gritty realism. At certain points you can almost feel the icy cold and barren loneliness of the border country.
The camera soon finds its way to Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) on the morning that her new ‘doublewide’ mobile home is arriving. Her youngest son, Ricky, is giddy with excitement at the prospect but his older brother, T.J. (a fifteen year old who has had to grow up far too fast), seems far more subdued. The reason for T.J. and Ray’s anxiety is that the patriarch of the family, a hopeless gambling addict, has fled to Atlantic City with the money that was supposed to pay for the house
Sure enough, the deliveryman refuses to hand over the house and explains that Ray needs to find the $4500 by Christmas or she will lose her $1500 deposit. Shortly thereafter, while searching for her husband at a casino on the local Indian reservation, Ray has an unfortunate run-in with Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a rude young Indian woman who seems to have stolen Ray’s husband’s car. Lila forces Ray to drive across the St Lawrence River to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. from the Canadian side of the border.
This is the set-up, and I will take you no further into the story because I see this as a blog for recommending, rather than ruining, good films. What I will do is try to explain why this story is so wonderfully hard-hitting, honest, and entertaining all at the same time.
To begin with, there is not a single element of the story that feels forced or dishonest; everything happens because of something deeply embedded in the characters emotional or social make-up. This is a very difficult thing to do, and it would have been impossible if the central characters hadn’t been so fully realised.
They are simple people with simple needs: Ray needs her new house to feel good about herself and please her children; Lila needs to make money to get her baby back from her mother (who stole the child from the hospital); and T.J. needs to feel like a man so that he can break out of his childish respect for his rat-fink father and start looking after his beloved brother.
But these simple needs betray a depth of character that is incredibly individual but also symptomatic of the society that they are forced to live in. Their needs are, for the most part, actually desires, and quite selfish ones at that. Their desperate attempts to fulfil these desires are driven by a misplaced belief that they are trying to please those who are close to them… but most of the time they end up hurting each other instead.
The basis is simple and effective: people in need of money are allowed to blur the lines of morality in the desperate pursuit of selfless and just goals. Or, to give it a Machiavellian twist, “the end justifies the means”. But the story investigates this most simple and engaging of ‘thriller’ conceits to its dramatic and socially affective end.
Can we really forgive Ray for aiding the despicable trade of human beings just because she wants a new house? Throughout the film her actions have unintended destructive consequences (increasing in dramatic effect as she gets dragged deeper into the world of trafficking) that we can’t help but blame her for, even though she is our protagonist and we generally support her decisions.
This constant, dizzying confusion that surrounds the morality of our protagonist’s actions is one of the truly hard-hitting elements of the film. As soon as we throw ourselves into a predictable ‘film audience’ empathy for the hero, we are slapped round the face as she pulls out a gun or forces the transformed Lila to take part in ‘one last job’. We want to support her, and we do because we know we would probably do the same thing, but we are forced to feel guilty for that natural sense of empathy for the underdog hero.
There is no doubt that the film is honest and hard-hitting in the extreme; but it is also genuinely entertaining on a dramatic and visceral level. It is the story of a gun-wielding ‘mom-turned-smuggler’ who drives across a frozen river to smuggle immigrants for Mafia bosses for Christ’s sake… what more do you want!
I wont tell you anything about the ending because I don’t want to ruin the film… but I so desperately want to tell you how well conceived it is. It follows on perfectly from the honest but entertaining nature of the rest of story (no mean feat, as endings to films like this are notoriously difficult to navigate).
This film really does have everything. If you fancy a trip to the cinema and were going to watch Harry Potter because it was the first film that came to mind, then please reconsider and watch this instead! If you are disappointed then you can ignore me – and the good people of the Sundance Film Festival Jury – for the rest of your lives. But if you enjoy it… well don’t say I didn’t tell you so!
Yesterday evening I had an unpleasant realisation… I had completely forgotten to watch Courtney Hunt’s much lauded debut feature, Frozen River. This was, of course, unacceptable. The last ‘promising’ female screenwriter to demand the attention of the Oscars was Diablo Cody, but on the assumption that the Oscar’s couldn’t be so disastrously wrong two years in a row, I decided to head over to the Odeon Panton Street to watch Frozen River.
At University I was forced to consider the importance of the ‘performance space’ to the experience of seeing a play or film. There is no doubt that the chosen location for a film’s exhibition – be it a living room, the local Multiplex, a rundown family theatre, or an archway near London Bridge – makes for a unique viewing experience. I had never actually entered the Odeon Panton Street (the one hidden behind the Odeon West End next door to the Odeon Leicester Square… monopoly anyone?) but I had always found it unassuming and, by extension, strangely alluring.
Now that I have seen a film there, I can promise you that it is the most disappointing cinema in London. I am still gob-smacked that they are allowed to charge the same £10 entry fee as the Odeon Leicester Square (a juggernaut of a screen) for the pleasure of sitting in the most cramped screening room in London, with a screen smaller than most home cinemas. At one point a person stood up three rows in front of me and blocked the entire screen. Screen 3 is literally a converted attic space. If you are ever choosing where to watch a film… avoid the Odeon Panton Street at all costs!
Fortunately, these unacceptable surroundings did not take away from what is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest films of the year. I simply cannot comprehend why this film didn’t do well at the Oscars. Oh wait… I just remembered the embarrassing bout of Slumdog fever that plagued this year’s festivities.
After the curtains had opened (it didn't take long... the screen was barely wider than my arm-span! Ok, I will douse my bitterness) the film began with a series of beautiful shots of upstate New York. This is the only time in the entire film that you are ever really aware of the cinematography. But it is always there: effortlessly matching the tone of the film and providing an extra layer of gritty realism. At certain points you can almost feel the icy cold and barren loneliness of the border country.
The camera soon finds its way to Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) on the morning that her new ‘doublewide’ mobile home is arriving. Her youngest son, Ricky, is giddy with excitement at the prospect but his older brother, T.J. (a fifteen year old who has had to grow up far too fast), seems far more subdued. The reason for T.J. and Ray’s anxiety is that the patriarch of the family, a hopeless gambling addict, has fled to Atlantic City with the money that was supposed to pay for the house
Sure enough, the deliveryman refuses to hand over the house and explains that Ray needs to find the $4500 by Christmas or she will lose her $1500 deposit. Shortly thereafter, while searching for her husband at a casino on the local Indian reservation, Ray has an unfortunate run-in with Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a rude young Indian woman who seems to have stolen Ray’s husband’s car. Lila forces Ray to drive across the St Lawrence River to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. from the Canadian side of the border.
This is the set-up, and I will take you no further into the story because I see this as a blog for recommending, rather than ruining, good films. What I will do is try to explain why this story is so wonderfully hard-hitting, honest, and entertaining all at the same time.
To begin with, there is not a single element of the story that feels forced or dishonest; everything happens because of something deeply embedded in the characters emotional or social make-up. This is a very difficult thing to do, and it would have been impossible if the central characters hadn’t been so fully realised.
They are simple people with simple needs: Ray needs her new house to feel good about herself and please her children; Lila needs to make money to get her baby back from her mother (who stole the child from the hospital); and T.J. needs to feel like a man so that he can break out of his childish respect for his rat-fink father and start looking after his beloved brother.
But these simple needs betray a depth of character that is incredibly individual but also symptomatic of the society that they are forced to live in. Their needs are, for the most part, actually desires, and quite selfish ones at that. Their desperate attempts to fulfil these desires are driven by a misplaced belief that they are trying to please those who are close to them… but most of the time they end up hurting each other instead.
The basis is simple and effective: people in need of money are allowed to blur the lines of morality in the desperate pursuit of selfless and just goals. Or, to give it a Machiavellian twist, “the end justifies the means”. But the story investigates this most simple and engaging of ‘thriller’ conceits to its dramatic and socially affective end.
Can we really forgive Ray for aiding the despicable trade of human beings just because she wants a new house? Throughout the film her actions have unintended destructive consequences (increasing in dramatic effect as she gets dragged deeper into the world of trafficking) that we can’t help but blame her for, even though she is our protagonist and we generally support her decisions.
This constant, dizzying confusion that surrounds the morality of our protagonist’s actions is one of the truly hard-hitting elements of the film. As soon as we throw ourselves into a predictable ‘film audience’ empathy for the hero, we are slapped round the face as she pulls out a gun or forces the transformed Lila to take part in ‘one last job’. We want to support her, and we do because we know we would probably do the same thing, but we are forced to feel guilty for that natural sense of empathy for the underdog hero.
There is no doubt that the film is honest and hard-hitting in the extreme; but it is also genuinely entertaining on a dramatic and visceral level. It is the story of a gun-wielding ‘mom-turned-smuggler’ who drives across a frozen river to smuggle immigrants for Mafia bosses for Christ’s sake… what more do you want!
I wont tell you anything about the ending because I don’t want to ruin the film… but I so desperately want to tell you how well conceived it is. It follows on perfectly from the honest but entertaining nature of the rest of story (no mean feat, as endings to films like this are notoriously difficult to navigate).
This film really does have everything. If you fancy a trip to the cinema and were going to watch Harry Potter because it was the first film that came to mind, then please reconsider and watch this instead! If you are disappointed then you can ignore me – and the good people of the Sundance Film Festival Jury – for the rest of your lives. But if you enjoy it… well don’t say I didn’t tell you so!
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