Ice Storm dangerous but alive
Ice Storm A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1997 By Michael Redman
***1/2 (out of ****)
There's something resplendent about a winter ice storm that few people ever experience as they huddle inside awaiting the thaw. Viewing from safety through the glazed glass gives a distorted view of the beauty and the danger outside in the extremes.
During the early seventies the suburbs were a questionable refuge from the whirlwind of change sweeping through the country. As the trappings of the cultural and sexual revolution became mainstream and seeped into those shelters, it happened without much of its soul. The exploration of the sixties turned into the "Me Decade" in a few short years.
In 1973 Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) is doing everything right. Married to a beautiful woman, he has a successful career, two kids and a modern house in the hamlet of New Canaan, Connecticut. It should be enough, but his life feels empty. His loveless affair with neighbor Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver) isn't helping much. When he wants to talk, she responds "You're boring me. I have a husband. I don't have a need for another one."
Ben and Janey are indeed bored, not just with their spouses and each other, but with everything they do. Like the rest of their friends, they are grasping at straws searching for something to make them feel alive. They want to live on the edge from the comfort of their living rooms.
In direct contrast, the children are embracing life, fumbling though they may be. Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) is away at boarding school and coming to grips with his own sexuality attempting to get the attention of an attractive girl before his Don Juan roommate gets to her first.
His younger sister Wendy tests her own sexual power with Janey's sons Duckie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and Mikey (Elijah Wood). There's a great scene where she's wearing a grotesque Nixon mask while Mikey lies on top of her in a basement family room. "Take down your pants and I'll touch it, but that's all," she tempts him. When Ben walks in on them after being abandoned in Janey's bed upstairs, it's a snapshot of seventies suburban life.
Painfully shy Duckie spends most of his time attaching M-80s to model planes and blowing them up in flight. His response to Wendy's propositions is fright. He's outgrown his toys but can't quite figure out what to do about it.
All of this sexual tension comes to a head the day after Thanksgiving. The adults of the neighborhood attend a "key party" where the men put their car keys in a bowl and the women pick out a set to determine their partner for the night. While the joyless wife-swapping party takes place, an ice storm rages outside.
The kids head out to partake of the tempest while their parents nervously banter with each other. It's hazardous out there, but that's where life is. It's only by venturing into the unknown that anything meaningful happens as they will all discover. The only way to navigate the alien are with your eyes wide open -- something no one in the film does. The children are too inexperienced and the adults, too filled with ennui.
Surprisingly director Ang Lee ("Sense And Sensibility") does a good job representing the era since he didn't move to the US from Taiwan until 1978. As with many period pieces, there's a bit too many in-your-face artifacts. During the first half you'll grow tired of waterbeds, ugly hairstyles and those atrocious fashions, but they aren't shoved down your throat in the same manner that they were in "Boogie Nights".
Stepping out of the theater on a crisp winter's night with ice crunching beneath your feet, you'll realize that we are all slipping around out there in the wilderness in one way or another. About the most we can hope for is that we make it through with some measure of grace.
(Michael Redman has celebrated over 22 winter holiday seasons while writing these columns. He's still awaiting the Christmas spirit.)
[This appeared in the 12/18/97 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be reached at redman@bvoice.com ]
-- mailto:redman@bvoice.com This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman
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