冰冻之河Frozen River英文影评

Venturing deep into the trenches where hard-working Americans struggle to put food on the table, Courtney Hunt’s somber film “Frozen River” evokes a perfect storm of present-day woes: illegal immigration, ethnic tension, depressed real estate, high gas prices and dire poverty.

The film’s setting, in upstate New York at the Canadian border, is a gray wintry landscape of mud and slush dotted with trailers and discount stores. Although it is days before Christmas, there is no joy here, and as the movie goes along, its chill begins to seep into your bones.

The closest thing to a social hub is a bingo parlor on the Mohawk reservation that straddles the frozen St. Lawrence River. Here is where the husband of Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), the hard-bitten mother of two sons, 15-year-old T. J. (Charlie McDermott) and 5-year-old Ricky (James Reilly), gambled away the family’s meager savings before deserting them, leaving no word.

Ray, who earns a meager wage working part time at the Yankee One Dollar Store, is so destitute she can’t afford Christmas presents. The money her husband squandered was to be used for the balloon payment on a new double-wide trailer. Unless she comes up with the money by Christmas, she will lose everything.

If “Frozen River” has all the ingredients for a weepy Christmas story in the tradition of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” it is almost the opposite of that. It is grim reality. But because Ray refuses to give up, she lends the movie nobility. Ms. Leo’s magnificent portrayal of a woman of indomitable grit and not an iota of self-pity makes “Frozen River” a compelling study of individual courage.

She brings the same kind of gravity to the role that Patricia Neal did to Alma Brown in “Hud” 45 years ago. This weathered, redheaded actress makes you believe in her character’s resilience. As Ray is humiliated in a real estate office and hounded by creditors who threaten to repossess the big-screen television in her shabby living room, you admire her fortitude; her anger never gets the better of her.

Not the least of her problems is T. J., who offers to quit school and take a job. As the de facto head of the household while she is working, he cooks up a telemarketing scam and almost burns down the trailer when he uses his father’s blowtorch to unfreeze the pipes.

The uneasy relations between the Mohawks and the area’s white working-class residents are embodied by the relationship of necessity Ray develops with Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a glum single mother with a reputation for smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States from Canada. They meet when Ray visits the bingo parlor looking for her husband and catches Lila stealing the car he left behind.

Ray and Lila become smugglers who drive across the frozen river for meetings with a sinister, gun-toting Québécois. He hands over illegal aliens from China and Pakistan who hide in the trunk while Ray drives them over the ice to a remote motel on the other side of the border. At each stop cash is exchanged and haggled over.

Carrying out this risky work, Ray drives with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a gun. There is the added lurking fear that the ice may crack. Lila is as desperate as Ray. Her daughter was taken at birth from the hospital by Lila’s mother-in-law, who refuses to hand over the child, whom she wants to raise by herself.

Racism is a fact of life. The state police have a double standard for Indians and whites; a white driver is much less likely to be stopped and questioned. Lila makes no secret of her hatred of whites. Ray has her own ethnic qualms. What if the Pakistanis she is carrying across the border are terrorists?

If “Frozen River” is a social realist film, it has no political axes to grind. It is more interested in exploring the reluctant bond that develops between Ray and Lila than in suggesting any root causes for their situations. When that bond is severely tested, the movie refuses to sentimentalize it.

Ms. Hunt’s eye for detail has the precision of a short story writer’s. She misses nothing, not even the model of the car Ray drives (a Dodge Spirit) and the supper Ray serves one night when she is out of cash: popcorn and Tang.

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