Frozen River Lesson Plan
Before the Film
The film is set in the middle of winter in an area that is best described as a wasteland. There is snow and mud everywhere. It is a nondescript area with no particular point of reference or characteristic, except that it borders the Mohawk Indian Reservation in up-state New York along the New York/Montreal, Canada border. Choose some adjectives to best describe the ambient of the film.
In America, Indian Reservations have their own police and laws. Regular US police are not allowed to patrol on the reservation. This fact is used in the film.
The Mohawk Reservation is on the US/Canada border. You can cross the “border” during the winter by traversing a lake covered with ice. Why is this route used in the film. Why is it an important quality of the film, even used in the title?
The first protagonist presented in the film is a “white” woman who has just been abandoned by her husband and is left to care for her two sons alone. Here husband was a gambling addict. What is an addict? What happens in an addiction situation? Is it easy to manage a person who is addicted?
In the film, the addicted husband has taken money that was to be used for the delivery of a mobile home, a prefabricated home that can be purchased and delivered directly on site. The protagonist had paid the first down payment on the home and was saving up for the second and final payment, in the film called a balloon payment, to be paid on delivery. Now the money was gone and it was very unclear if they would loose the original payment AND the house.
A second protagonist is presented, an Indian woman named Laila Littlewolf. Be ready to describe both women. What do they have in common? What differences do they have? Why are their lives brought together?
There is an illegal smuggling operation at the center of the film. Watch for it and be ready to describe it.