Review: The Ice Storm (1997) Starring: Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, Henry Czerny, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jamey Sheridan, David Krumholtz, Elijah Wood
Review by Alex Bryson
Scale: **** / ****
Ang Lee ventures into new territory in "The Ice Storm" - 70s America. At least I thought it was new, until about two minutes in a character makes a speech about what families are like ("personal negative matter" apparently). That's OK by me though - Lee is the undisputed master of this type of film-making, as he showed in "The Wedding Banquet" and more recently "Sense and Sensibility".
Something is badly wrong in the well-heeled suburbia of New Canaan, Connecticut. It isn't the interior decor, or the hideous shirts and flared trousers - the malaise is deeper. Fortunately the director realises that, and although there are a few jokes at the expense of waterbeds he cuts straight to the deeply troubled relationships of the inhabitants.
"The Ice Storm" is about two families: that of Joan Allen and Kevin Kline, and Sigourney Weaver and Jamey Sheridan. It is a period study of the era where the experiments of the late sixties had seeped into the middle-aged middle-class consciousness, wreaking havoc on their respectable lives, and changing the face of their society. Ben Hood (Kline) is having an affair with neighbour Janey Carver (Weaver). His daughter is experimenting with sex with her two sons. Elena, Ben's wife, is uneasy, sensing his betrayal, and is meanwhile preyed on by seedy clergyman Michael Cumpsty. Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire), the insightful narrator has his sights set on a vacuous rich girl after she spouts about existentialism.
The film is played out at dinner parties and "key" parties, and as the story unfolds to its climax the ice storm of the title rages outside. Ice is big in the movie, like the pressure on its characters to find direction and meaning in the inhospitable climate of the day. Their notions seem ridiculous, but Lee manages to retain our sympathy for them, no matter how screwed up they are. They struggle with the consequences of the upheaval, seeking emotional satisfaction: the adolescent Paul seems to have the profoundest understanding, and that comes from a Fantastic Four comic book. A lack of connection between them has deadened their lives like the fury of the elements outside - one scene shows Kline bored out of his skull in a board meeting, yet he cannot communicate his frustration to either his wife or Janey, who seeks only an "explicitly sexual relationship". Elena attempts to block out the pressures and turns towards the artefacts of the seventies like cultish religion and group marriage therapy. Even she succumbs to quite possibly the most unerotic extra-marital love scene ever filmed.
All the while the children are on a journey of discovery themselves: Wendy, the independent daughter of the Hood family (played marvellously by Christina Ricci) threatens the remaining order by exposing herself to Sandy (Sigourney Weaver's reprimand speech about coming of age rituals in "Samoa and other developing nations" is particularly acute). In another scene she and Mikey fumble as she wears a rubber Nixon mask - a disturbing image. The seventies are evoked through this listless search for something and the bizarre solutions that were offered. With their partner swapping and gullible self-help philosophies, their need for emotional support, the adults attempt to play the children, whilst the younger generation attempt to find their way in the adult world.
The forces at play on these people are like the ice: ice so powerful that it can bend iron lamps and fell trees: such an immense force that it will crush anything it forms on: there is a sense that something terrible will happen throughout - images like Mikey jumping up and down on a frozen diving board, or Sandy playing with explosives. The tragedy of these battered relationships is clear right from the beginning: the families are splintered by straining marriages and generation difference, but ultimately tragedy brings them together, the ice storm uses up its energy and calm is restored: and in the bare new light emerges understanding.
RATING: **** / ****
Copyright Alex Bryson (1998)
-- Alex Bryson
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