What strikes me most about the movie is the eye for detail. I grew up in upstate New York and went to college in the same general area that movie is set. These are areas that are economically depressed in good times, giving something of a grim determination to the people who struggle against poverty there. I've been that poor at times in life and I've definitely known many other people who were as well. The movie is about that fight to keep going when there is no money and nothing seems to go right. The dreams of people in this situation are so small that it would be depressing, but they don't have time to stop and be depressed about it. You just keep soldiering forward, dealing with each little disaster as it arrives.The movie stars Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy. She lives in a trailer near Massena at the Us/Canadian border with her two sons. Her gambler husband has just disappeared, taking all their money. And it's right before Christmas. And the double wide home they are buying has just arrived. And it's going to leave right away because Ray doesn't have the money for the balloon payment. In most movies, Ray would do something extravagant to get her husband back, probably after a big emotional scene. In this movie, which actually resembles real life, Ray quietly sheds a couple tears and then sets about moving forward with life.
She does make a bit of an effort to find her husband, but only as far as it fits her schedule. What she finds is Lila (Misty Upham) driving Ray's husband's car on the Mohawk reservation. Almost as quickly Ray discovers that Lila is involved with smuggling illegal aliens into the US through the reservation. She also discovers that it pays well. When your kids are eating popcorn and Tang for breakfast and you have to count coins to afford to put some gas in the car, that's a pretty great discovery. That's the thing about poverty, matters of morality and legality kind of fade into the background if you see a way out of it. Ray could and should be horrified at the notion of smuggling humans into a life bordering on slavery. But the need to provide for her family and maybe, just maybe get just a tiny bit of comfort in life supercedes the other matters.
Lila isn't much different. She's a widowed mother, whose baby has been seized by her mother-in-law. The tribal elders know she's a smuggler and do their best to keep her out of trouble. Lila desperately wants her child back but can't seem to pull together the self respect to do something about it. She does awful things for money but probably doesn't much care considering she lives in a camper, can barely see and has to walk everywhere in the brutal cold.
They have one brief conversation about Ray's double wide, which she describes like a palace. It has unheard of luxuries like carpeting and insulation, so "the pipes can never freeze." As someone who has had to thaw out pipes on plenty of occasions, I can relate to that sort of dream. I wouldn't mind some quality insulation myself. But I'm also not in the grip of poverty, so the lengths I'll go for that dream can't match those of Ray.
Melissa Leo is magnificent in this role. She never feels like an actor in a role. She seems more like someone that I know, struggling through life. There isn't an ounce of glamour in this performance. Ray looks perpetually sad, aggravated and harried. From the way she smokes a cigarette to the way she moves speak of that. She delivers grim reality with such clarity that you never doubt a thing she says or does. Tons of little details like the way she holds her purse, kept me constantly reminded of women I've known in this area.
I know that Hunt spent a lot of time in these areas absorbing the life for her script, but Leo is so keyed in that I'd want to guess that she grew up here. The two of them received Oscar nominations for their work here and I really hope they win. Call me a homer if you want but they deserve any and all awards for this movie.
