Review: The Ice Storm (1997)

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The Ice Storm

Rating

Director

Ang Lee

Screenplay

James Schamus (Novel: Rick Moody)

Length

1h 52m

Starring

Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Henry Czerny, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Adam Hann-Byrd, David Krumholtz, Jamey Sheridan, Kate Burton, William Cain, Michael Cumpsty, Maia Danziger, Katie Holmes, Allison Janney, John Benjamin Hickey

MPAA Rating

Basic Plot

It’s the 1970s and the Hood’s and Carver’s represent the traditional and enhanced dysfunctional family, even by today’s standards.

Review

The Ice Storm begins with an electric train sitting motionless on an ice-covered track. We hear the crackling of electricity flowing through the veins of wires overhead and eventually the train reactivates. It cracks and moans as it begins moving again and we see that one of the passengers is a young boy comparing life and family with Fantastic Four comic issue #1.

Ang Lee paints a vivid picture of dysfunctional family life in the 1970s. A decade where, as Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) comments, Nixon is a “liar” and existential thinking is abound in the youth population.

Ben and Elena Hood (Kevin Kline and Joan Allen) are, at best, good examples of dysfunction. Elena is a loving wife who accepts everything her husband does and laments her lost childhood. So much so she goes to a local pharmacy and is caught shoplifting. “Benji” is a loving husband, but far from faithful. He’s having an affair with a neighbor Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver).

The Hoods have two children: Wendy, a sexually knowledgeable teenager, and Paul (Tobey Maguire), their son who is away at a private school and the young man we see on the train at the beginning.

Wendy is also exploring her sexuality and that of her neighbor’s kids, both of them: Mikey (Elijah Wood), who likes her and wants to get in her pants, and Sandy (Adam Hand-Byrd), who is under 10 years of age and doesn’t know exactly what he want, he just knows he loves Wendy.

Paul has fallen in lust many times with girls at his school, but every time he wants to get together with them, his drug-loving roommate, George (Henry Czerny), has already had them. George is his best friend and Paul tells him about his interest, which another friend remarks is the reason Paul can’t get laid.

Their mother isn’t enthused with her husband, Jim (Jamey Sheridan), who’s always away on business, but can’t stand to listen to Ben’s problems. She doesn’t want “another husband.”

Ang Lee directs this film with great vigor and allows us to follow the action without beating us over the head with it. He takes political, ethical and philosophical ideas and turns them inside out exposing the possible truth behind them.

The cinematography is almost an entity of its own, the beautiful, but deadly, ice-covered light polls bending to the earth and the trees glistening with frozen water are magnificently shot.

On top of everything, a fantastic script, direction and cinematography, the most astounding part of the film is its cast. Joan Allen and Kevin Kline compliment each other and Christina Ricci is divinely mature. Sigourney Weaver acts her heart out, but doesn’t catch my attention as the supreme performance of the film, but is certainly laudable.

In all its effort, “The Ice Storm” is so life-like and real that if the settings were modernized, it would still be topical today.