Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.
One of the many things I find interesting about movies is those instances in which a movie takes a very different perspective from the norm. I think about a film like Paradise Now, for instance, that attempts to show suicide attacks from the point of view of the attacker. While definitely sympathetic to Palestine, the film isn’t pro-suicide bomber, but an attempt to get inside the mind of someone who would do such a thing. In the case of Frozen River, the question asked is what might drive someone to act in a way completely against what she evidently stands for.
Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) lives in a trailer with her sons T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and Ricky (James Reilly). Ray is prematurely old—she’s probably in her late 30s or early 40s but looks closer to her mid-50s. She works part-time at a dollar store and does the best she can with a husband who is a chronic gambler and who regularly takes the money she has saved up to buy a double-wide trailer and blows it on lottery tickets and games at the local Mohawk casino. This is where we start the film—with her unable to make the balloon payment for her trailer and being threatened with having her television repossessed by the rental company.
