Movie-Frozen River

Frozen River is an Oscar nominated film, with Melissa Leo nominated as best lead actress.

I had never heard of this movie before the Oscar nominations. But it is nice that the Oscars sometimes highlight some small films that really should be seen by more people. Frozen River (2008) is a movie like that.

Now it is not a "feel good" movie. It is about people just making it...just eking by their existence in small town America. Melissa Leo is Ray, a care worn, run-down, mother of two, whose husband, a gambling addict has just left for parts unknown. He leaves them behind right before Christmas, living in a trailer, with Ray able only to work part-time at a small store.

She lives near the Mohawk reservation, and gets caught up with smuggling people across the reservation from Canada to the U.S., across a winter frozen river. With a Mohawk woman, Lila helping her and teaching her how to smuggle, Ray does not like what she is doing, but can find no other way to keep her home, as little as she has, together.

This is a grim film for the most part. The setting is cold and dirty, and Ray herself echoes the setting. The circumstances of her becoming a human smuggler is grim too...survival. And the people she deals with live on the edge of the law, as she does...on the edge of American society.

Leo does a great job, portraying the tired and old-before-her-time Ray. The world weariness and exhaustion reek from her, as does the stubbornness, to somehow find a way, even against her own morals, to survive.

As I said, Frozen River is not light fare. But it is thought provoking, and very well made. You are in this life with Ray, you feel the grimness and cold. You feel her being pushed to the edge. An excellent movie.