Review #899 - Ice Storm, The (1997)
THE SCOOP
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes
Plot: 1973, suburban Connecticut: middle class families experimenting with casual sex, drink, etc., find their lives out of control.
Genre: Drama
Awards: Won Best Screenplay and nom. for Palme d'Or (Cannes). Nom. for 1 Golden Globe - Best Supporting Actress
Runtime: 112min
Rating: M18 for sexuality and drug use, including scenes involving children, and for language.
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: MILD)
“Your family is the void you emerge from, and the place you return to when you die.”
Think
of Ang Lee, and a handful of award-winning films come to mind, most commonly Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012). While these are excellent films, they are
incomparable to The Ice Storm, a
peerless work of art that I feel is the Taiwanese-born director’s most perfect
film to date, and one of the greatest American dramas of the 1990s.
However,
it is strangely underrated or even under-the-radar, perhaps overshadowed by the
director’s more recognizable achievements.
I sincerely encourage you to see The
Ice Storm because it is one of those rare pictures where everything – the
acting, direction, tone, music, and more, comes together to create a profoundly
resonating experience.
Resonance
is such a powerful effect that only few works of cinema are able to achieve –
best exemplified by undisputed classics like De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) and Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). Adapted from the
1994 novel of the same name by Rick Moody, The
Ice Storm is the contemporary answer to the above-mentioned films.
Set
in America in the 1970s, an era best described as dazed-and-confused after the
wild-and-freewheeling 1960s, Lee’s film is an astute chronicle of the lives of
two middle-class families over the course of a Thanksgiving weekend in a
seemingly self-contained suburban town.
To say any more about the plot would leave you little room to unearth
the drama in this gem of a film. The
ensemble cast of Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire,
Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes, and many more, deliver top-notch
acting work with superb chemistry.
But
what is most impressive is Lee’s handling of the film’s tone – a nuanced,
reflective, and occasionally fateful setting of mood, somewhat alluding to the
impending ice storm that would take center stage in the final act, a natural
event that functions in the same capacity as a similar, albeit much more biblical,
occurrence in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia
(1999). Mychael Danna’s (Life of Pi) music is evocative, in particular
the use of the Native American flute, and Frederick Elmes’ (Blue Velvet, 1986) cinematography
employs greyish tones to reflect a lonely collective existence.
Sexuality
is a key theme in The Ice Storm, in
particular the impact of the sexual revolution on families. Parents have extramarital sexual affairs
while their children experiment with kissing, being naked and possibly having
sex with the opposite gender. There is
an almost too casual liberty of thought and action manifesting in Lee’s film as
each beautifully (or tragically) developed character tries to find his or her
moral compass in a world characterized by alternating feelings of hope and
despair.
The Ice Storm deconstructs
the American family in a way film critic James Berardinelli has called
“perceptive”. The characters are trapped
in their individual predicaments – who knows what their futures hold? In the final shot, Lee hints at the possible
reconciliation of the American family unit… but we can never be sure, for it
could also mark the beginning of a declining America in a state of flux, one
riddled with confusion and uncertainty.
Verdict: One of the most profoundly resonant works of
the 1990s, this underrated, tone-specific drama is arguably Ang Lee's finest
achievement as a filmmaker.
GRADE: A+
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