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Frozen River
Frozen River
Wed, 22 Jul 2009
Writer-director Courtney Hunt scored an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the admiration of Quentin Tarantino for her very first feature. Frozen River is a terrific example of writing for a specific environment, since it uses the icy current dividing the US-Canadian border, and the distinctive experiences of the people who live either side of it, as the fulcrum of a dramatic thriller with universal resonance. Our reviewer Trevor Johnston probes its inner workings and finds astute observation and ingenious construction combining to make the film as powerful as it is.
Be warned! As ever with our in-depth reviews, major spoilers lie ahead...
Who knew? Apparently, they’ve been smuggling stuff back and forth across the St Lawrence river for many years. It used to be cigarettes, because the Canadian authorities taxed their smokers heavily. These days it’s illegal immigrants, which is where Courtney Hunt comes in. She found out about the current situation on a visit to family in the area, thought it was promising subject matter and turned her research into an award-winning short which in turn became an award-winning début feature. Part of the strength of Frozen River is just how well the filmmaker knows her territory, since its suspense-driven story doesn’t use this particular milieu as interesting background for some thriller conceit – instead, the story and its moral dilemmas come directly out of its characters and their everyday lives.
Melissa Leo and Courtney Hunt on setRay Eddy (Melissa Leo, well worth her Oscar nomination too) lives in this insalubrious corner of upstate New York in a battered trailer she shares with her two sons. As the film gets under way her chances of swapping this accommodation for a new ‘doublewide’ mobile home are looking decidedly slim. Her husband, an inveterate gambler, has just absconded with a pile of cash just hours before the money was due to be handed over upon delivery of the family’s new abode. The prospect is looming of another Christmas in the same old grot-hole, and Ray’s job at the local ‘All For A Dollar’ store may not be enough to keep the household ticking over for much longer. Poverty: it’s instant motivation and lots of people can identify with it.
As Ray cries while doing her make-up in the mirror, we know exactly what her problem is, and there’s already a deadline ticking away: $4372 by Christmas or she’ll lose her new home and the existing $1500 deposit. But what’s the next move to get her out of this nightmare? Five minutes in and we’re already hooked. So far, though, this is a story which could be happening just about anywhere – it’s the subsequent developments which tie it into the specifics of this particular area.
Looking for her errant husband, Ray finds his car, which is being driven by Lila (Misty Upham), a young Mohawk woman who claims she found it abandoned after the male owner got on a bus. There’s a certain animosity between these two at first, since Ray clearly regards Lila as a thief, but in order to shake Ray off, the latter says she knows a guy who’ll buy the car for a price over the odds – because it has a button-release trunk. The rest of the movie essentially springs from this intriguing nugget of detail, which turns out to be a ruse to get Ray to drive Lila across the frozen St Lawrence, pick up illegal Chinese immigrants from her contact on the other side and deliver them back into the US. Since the Mohawk reservation extends over both sides of the border, Lila rationalises that it’s all on their tribal territory so it doesn’t constitute smuggling. Moreover, since the payday for the trip is certainly a lot more lucrative than any dead-end job, it seems that Ray may have found an answer to her problems: but at what price?
Melissa Leo - Frozen RiverIn outline, this shares much with the classic thriller scenario whereby the innocent protagonist’s life is thrown into disarray and the audience effectively grants them licence to go beyond the pale of usually acceptable behaviour to restore everything to order. That works here too, since we initially accept Ray’s self-justification that she’s only involved in the smuggling racket to try and get the money for her new home – she’s no criminal, she says. What’s especially rich about this script, however, is that the river/border isn’t just an effective location; it’s also a telling metaphor for the whole notion of crossing a line and coming back again. Lila justifies herself by calling on her tribal heritage, Ray claims purely financial duress: are either of them free from responsibility for the further suffering caused by helping to sustain people-trafficking? While we ponder that one, it’s clear the movie has found its central theme – whether testing circumstances can allow us to shirk our responsibilities to other human beings. The car journeys back and forth across the frozen St Lawrence then take on a double function: they sustain and intensify tension, but they also bring this key theme into critical focus.
Courtney Hunt’s tightly-plotted script essentially marshals Ray and Lila’s smuggling runs into four distinct sections corresponding to the four runs they make across the river.
(i) Discovery
In an atmosphere of mutual mistrust Lila leads Ray across the frozen river for the first time. Driving a couple of Chinese immigrants back to the US brings in a considerable sum of money, but a hesitant Ray is forced to comply by Lila, who has a gun on her, and then pockets the money and runs off. The smuggling operation presents Ray with a chance to pay for her new home, but it’s obviously a precarious business – and it’s illegal.
Suspense: This sets a precedent for the dangerous crossing of the ice, but also leaves Ray empty-handed so she’s tempted to go back for another run.
Morality: Ray knows this is wrong, but driving at gunpoint means she has no choice.
(ii) Implication
Ray seeks out Lila, and takes the lead in suggesting they tackle another run, which is a bit scarier than last time (since they deal with dodgy Quebecois dude, Bruno), but still successful. Ray pockets the $1200 this time so they’re even for the two trips, and gets home just in time to pay the rental company about to repossess her TV.
Suspense: The contact on the other side is a bit heavier, and the fact that Lila’s husband died doing a run across the river both add foreboding.
Morality: Ray sets herself the goal of paying for her new home, which (she argues) draws a line between her and the crooks who do this for a living – still she also realises that she’s perpetuating the misery for the illegal Chinese immigrants who’ll have to pay off iniquitous fees to the ‘snakeheads’ who got them this far.
(iii) Realisation
Driving snow on the night of Xmas Eve as Lila and Ray, two women hoping to provide for their children (Lila’s baby son has been taken by her mother-in-law, Ray’s boys face a meagre holiday season) make another trip. This time it’s two Pakistanis, whom Ray treats with suspicion, refusing to put allow their holdall in the trunk, and dumping it halfway across the river – only to discover on the other side that the couple’s baby was inside. Lila insists that they go back and Ray agrees: they save the child, but are stopped by the local US highway trooper on their return. It turns out to be a broken tail-light, yet Lila is spotted in the car…
Suspense: The quest to save the baby really raises the stakes and the tension, and though the successful outcome brings release, there’s a sense that Ray’s lie to the cop that Lila’s her childminder may come back to haunt her.
Morality: The baby incident shows Ray and Lila the full extent to which their actions as smugglers place vulnerable lives in their hands. After this, there are no excuses – Lila indeed says she’s giving up, yet Ray is unable to stop until she gets her new home. Ray has crossed the line, is she tainted forever?
(iv) Resolution
Still short of the money she needs for the ‘doublewide’, Ray offers to help Lila get her baby back, effectively manipulating her partner in crime into continuing. The run goes from bad to worse after a violent face-off with seedy Bruno in Montreal. The women end up taking two abused Chinese sex workers back across, then the car sinks in mid-river. Seeking refuge in the reservation brings the tribal council into action: they want to hand over Ray or Lila to show they’re making a stand against the smugglers. Ray decides to sacrifice herself, offering Lila a new home if they use what’s already paid to the trailer salesman to buy a more compact model. This gives Lila the strength to retrieve her baby from her mother-in-law, and, after serving her time, Ray is also determined enough not to answer her errant husband’s pleas to take him back.
Suspense: The intensity escalates yet further as Ray and Lila’s lives are at risk from the sex traffickers and an icy, watery demise in the river. Having survived that, there’s yet more tension as Ray weighs up the decision to take responsibility for her actions.
Morality: With nowhere left to run, Ray gives herself up so Lila can have a better life with her baby. She realises her responsibility towards others, and, as we can see from her resolve to move on from a dysfunctional marriage, prospers from the experience.
The progression in terms of the build-up and release of tension, and how this is barely divisible from the protagonist’s moral journey is really skilfully worked out. Ultimately though, all of this springs from the fact that it’s hard to tell where the characters’ lives end and the plot begins. In the course of the story, we learn that Ray’s husband is a Mohawk and his gambling addiction is just part of the wider picture of social problems facing this community, whose pride in maintaining their own sense of territory feeds into the smuggling activity – which has its roots in the same social problems, a vicious cycle of poverty. The pivotal moment in the climax – Ray giving herself up for Lila – also derives from the tribal council’s need to make some sort of accommodation with the state troopers, while Ray’s acceptance of her own guilt and her compassion towards the Mohawk single mum also takes something positive from the film’s otherwise pretty open depiction of the mistrust between whites and Native Americans.
While it’s never preachy, the film shows us how class and ethnic conflicts are sharper and the lure of criminality stronger for those on the social margins – a truism Paul Laverty and Ken Loach’s work on this side of the Atlantic explores in depth too. Certainly, rich territory for any prospective screenwriter who takes the time to understand how these pieces of the social jigsaw fit together and where the dramatically promising dividing lines lie – then has the nous to shape a story which grows out of such lives rather than being imposed upon them. Screenwriting, in the end, has a multitude of technical demands, but astute observation of people and places provides at least some of the armoury to deal with them.
Hints and Tips
Smugglers - Frozen River
Desperation is drama: Good people who want to provide for their families cross the line and do things they shouldn’t, which is great news for screenwriters searching for material. These are issues with which the audience will readily identify, set within a context of ready conflict and moral complexity. But remember….
It’s not just about the money: This sort of story appears to be about characters trying to retain dignity through holding on to their small corner of the consumerist dream. However, as Frozen River so adeptly demonstrates, it’s the underlying issues which are, in the end, more significant for the characters’ prospects. In the course of her travails, Ray learns that she can’t just look after number one, that she has responsibilities towards others – it’s implicit that this respect for others brings her the self-respect which finally enables her to move out of a dysfunctional marriage into a new, harmonious, if somewhat unconventional domestic set-up. As ever, it’s not just about what the protagonist wants, it’s about what they need.
Setting an example: When a story’s dealing with essentially ordinary working people, it can be difficult for a writer to articulate the moral issues they’re interested in exploring – after all, these characters don’t talk like human rights lawyers. What Courtney Hunt does here is interesting and effective, since it’s not protagonist Ray but her partner-in-crime Lila, seemingly even deeper in denial, who first makes the realisation that their smuggling is morally unacceptable. She sets the example for Ray, creating an unexpected ripple in the story, and thus allowing the script to heighten the drama by having Ray take the lead in pushing Lila to continue the illegal cross-river runs. This is a really useful dramatic template, because by deepening Ray’s guilt, it raises the stakes and makes her climactic realisation of responsibility even more intense.
The mirror subplot: There’s another handy device on display in Frozen River, which threads through the misadventures of Ray’s son, Troy Jr, as a paradigm for the lessons Ray herself needs to learn. Just like his mother, Troy Jr feels compelled to provide an Xmas treat for his little brother, but getting his present involves dabbling in telephone fraud and tricking some elderly Mohawk woman out of her credit card details. Since the script has placed Lila’s moment of realisation before the climactic crunch for Ray, this leaves Troy Jr’s day of reckoning (the police ensure that he makes a personal apology to the old lady in question) to take its place in the resolution as a way of amplifying what Ray has learned in the course of the drama. In some circumstances, this could seem like over-emphasis, but since Ray’s ultimate growth is to do with issues of respect and responsibility which underlie the ostensible buy-the-trailer plot, there’s clear justification for it.
©Trevor Johnston/The Script Factory 2009
If you'd like to discuss this review with Trevor Johnston you can email him at info@scriptfactory.co.uk - and to read other reviews by Trevor click here.