Review: The Ice Storm

And Lee and film editor Tim Squyres tie the film together in the masterful, interwoven tension of the night of the storm.

The Ice Storm
Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Set over a Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, Ang Lee’s second English-language film (following Sense and Sensibility) captures a semi-affluent Connecticut family gathering in the suburbs as Watergate plays out on television and a dangerous storm closes in. As in all of Lee’s previous films (and all that would follow, including Oscar-winner Brokeback Mountain and this year’s Lust, Caution), the film pivots around two intertwined and interdependent conflicts: old world tradition versus change and society’s expectations versus an individual desires. These essential themes for the Taiwanese-born filmmaker, whose grandparents were killed in China during the cultural revolution, are captured in The Ice Storm under the larger veil of experimentation—sexual, chemical interpersonal—as Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) attempts to disguise his not-so-secret affair with his neighbor, Janey (Sigourney Weaver), from a detached and daydreaming wife, Elena (Joan Allen), promiscuous daughter, Wendy (Christina Ricci), and a drug-addled, comic book-reading son, Paul (Tobey Maguire), home from prep school. The script, written by long-time Lee collaborator James Schamus off of Rick Moody’s acclaimed 1994 novel, operates like a good joke, with a well-phrased setup—Paul’s references to the Fantastic Four as a family of superheroes, saying in voiceover, “Your family is the void you emerge from and the place you return to when you die”—that plays out in the series of set pieces and humorous, neatly worded monologues that preview the story’s climax, the night of the storm. As in any joke, destiny is a major character: The melodramatic story in Paul’s comic is almost indistinguishable from the fate of Janey’s son, Mikey (Elijah Wood), and the ultimate failed or frustrated sexual attempts by the Hood parents mirror those of their kids. The characters have precious little control over the action of the film, as Ice Storm prefigures the suburban family-dysfunction story that has become so familiar in recent years: Garden State, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Little Children, Little Miss Sunshine. The movie escapes so basic a reading because of Lee himself, an outsider (Lee did not arrive in the United States until 1978) who ably turned Ice Storm into a period piece that examines a significant change in the American way of life: when the barreling train of late-’60s liberation met the brick wall of suburban, conservative adulthood, symbolized by Nixon’s face on the television screen and the hard lines of the suburban mod architecture awkwardly placed inside New England forests. The costumes in the film reflect a special emphasis on ’70s culture. Composer Mychael Danna’s score, which plays on this recognition of American lifestyle by borrowing Native American themes, sets up the film’s carefully crafted moodiness. And Lee and film editor Tim Squyres tie the film together in the masterful, interwoven tension of the night of the storm.

Score: 
 Cast: Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Henry Czerny, Adam Hann-Byrd, David Krumholtz, Jamey Sheridan, Katie Holmes, Allison Janney  Director: Ang Lee  Screenwriter: James Schamus  Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures  Running Time: 113 min  Rating: R  Year: 1997  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Arthur Ryel-Lindsey

Arthur Ryel-Lindsey is a Chicago native who comes correct with an Eagle Scout badge and Ohio State University Marching Band street cred. His writing has appeared in Esquire and The American Interest.

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