THE ICE STORM 1997
A film review by Timothy Voon
Copyright 1998 Timothy Voon
2 :-) :-) for the blizzard
Starring: Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, Elijah Wood, Adam Hann-Byrd, Toby Maguire. Screenplay: James Schamus, based on the novel by Rick Moody. Director: Ang Lee.
On Thanksgiving weekend, winter 1973, there's more than just a blizzard blowing in New Canaan Connecticut. There's a plenty married adults having extra-marital affairs, a plenty children experimenting with their bodies and tragedy waiting to erupt from the eye of the storm. If Ang Lee wanted us to feel the coldness of the changing climate, then he has succeeded in giving as a good bout of frostbite – everything from the weather to the décor to the relationships are meticulously frigid and marvellously frozen.
During the course of the movie the subject of a key chain party is raised. When my companion asked me what this was I answered, ‘Well I think it's when they pick a key out of the bowl, and they get to test drive each others cars.' Boy was I wrong. To think that grownups behaved so in the decade when I was born made me worry about the conduct of my own parents. So I went home and I interrogated them and they of course denied any knowledge of such tomfoolery. But one wonders?
This movie is also about the childhood discovery of sex. Everybody finds out sometime, some younger, some older and some not all. Knowledge is obtained through dirty magazines, accidentally walking in on your sister in the shower and of course first hand. In this movie, Ang Lee decides to explore the themes by allowing the kids to have a peek at each others pee pee, with suggestions of touching and tasting, then stripping a toy soldier to look at it's pee pee also, before just getting plain naked. It sounds offensive, but with Ang Lee's placid form of directing – you'll probably just raise an eyebrow.
Needless to say the characters are very much in need of love and not sex. Using the cold climate to his advantage, Lee shows us what life is like, why it needs to change and then gives his conclusion. Kevin Kline is purely dramatic in this movie as the unfaithful husband – a nice change of pace for him. Joan Allen is every bit the sweet wife she was in the movie FACE/OFF, and Sigourney Weaver every bit the vamp we despised in WORKING GIRL - 70's style of course. However, the praise for fine acting also belongs to the children. Christina Ricci is as good a child actress as they come, and in this movie she hones in on her tart qualities. Elijah Wood seems to be perpetually trapped in roles requiring wide-eye innocence and perhaps needs to develop a mean streak or two. Any ways, I hope these two young actors manage an easy transition from child to adult star without incident, for they are amongst my favourite.
So if you like stories about complex relationships and in depth character development, then you have found the movie in THE ICE STORM. Nobody does movies on character driven situations better than Mr Lee.
Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au
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