The Ice Storm (27 September 1997)
directed by Ang Lee
starring Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Adam Hann-Byrd, Henry Czerny, Allison Janney
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MPAA rating: Studio: 20th Century Fox Script: James Schamus Based on the book by: Rick Moody Music: Mychael Danna Running time: 112 minutes Tags: 1970s; Connecticut; Drama; drugs; Family Crisis; New York City; novel adaptation; rain; sex; sexual experimentation; storms; tragedy; winter Tactical strength: [5/10]
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for sexuality and drug use, including scenes involving children, and for language
As I watched this film, I kept asking myself, "What are these people thinking?" The story focuses on two families, the Hoods and the Carvers, who live in New Caanan, Connecticut. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) sleeps with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver); Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci), Ben's 14-year-old daughter, plays sex games with two of the Carver's boys, Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd); and Paul Hood, Ben's 16-year-old son goes to boarding school, indulges in drugs, and hopes to get lucky with a girl who he visits in New York.
After an hour or so of establishing the amoral characters and the unstable marriages, all the adults go to a spouse-swapping Thanksgiving party. When the Carvers arrive and learn of the spouse swapping, they get back in their car and have a chance to not get involved. Instead, Elenea Hood (Joan Allen) gets mad and thinks that participating in the party will somehow enable her to get even with her cheating husband. At the end of the party, Ben is too drunk to have sex with anyone, Janey goes off with a barely post-adolescent hunk, and Elenea ends up with Janey's husband Jim. Jim and Elena discuss that they should just go home, but while they wait for the car windows to defrost, they cave in and have a 30-second fling and then feel terribly guilty.
The movie gets its name from the freezing rain storm that occurs the night of the party. The morning after an ice storm is one of the most beautiful sites you could ever see, but it is also terribly dangerous. Trees and power lines snap at the slightest touch or breeze. I'd like to draw some parallel from the ice storm to the events in the movie, but there is nothing beautiful yet dangerous. Only the ice itself could represent these characters who live cold, amoral and pathetic lives that more resemble a rotting bridge about to collapse than an ice storm.
At the end, Mikey Carver goes out to play in the ice storm and dies when an electric power line falls near him and hits the metal railing he's sitting on. Ben, sober enough to drive home, finds Mikey's body and takes it to the Carver's home where both families gather around the dead body. You can only hope that losing Mikey will jolt these dolts into seeing that their lives need radical adjustment and that sex can't serve as a substitute for real emotional commitment and relationships. But more than likely, Mikey's death will only serve as the catalyst that ends both marriages and puts thousands in the pockets of therapists.
Director Ang Lee skillfully creates the bleak mood of The Ice Storm through carefully crafted scenes and an excellent cast that easily portray the film's hollow characters. Lee presents us with a slice-of-life from the early 1970s, but his view looks at only one segment of the population and doesn't do justice to the many decent people who were able to live moral and emotionally fulfilling lives in spite of the 1970s.
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