The Ice Storm (1997)

Sadly Over-hyped

hyped garbage

Brilliant and touching

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I've been on something of an Ang Lee retrospective lately. He made this film before Ride with the Devil and Crouching Tiger, films where he really let the camera dance.Since the camera can't dance here (it's purely a kitchen sink drama - all interiors for the most part), something else has to serve as the reflexive action for the viewer.The film is rooted in Christina Ricci's performance. Her character is a liar, and she lies through the entire movie except at the end where she comforts the other brother.The framework is the 70s and Watergate. As Watergate teaches us, it's the lie that gets you. Every character in this movie is lying to everyone else.

In a small town from Connecticut, several families seem to go through some sort of mid-life crisis. Seeming unable to find their welfare, the adult members start acting strange, almost searching for a new life, while their kids, who are in need of guidance are completely ignored, leaving them free to do whatever they desire, no matter how wrong it might be. It's a very odd movie which tries to present something special but ends up telling boring and ordinary adventures of ordinary people which tend to exit their ordinary life in search of something else. To be honest, I really don't understand its high rating. It presents absolutely nothing impressive, just a series of apparently random events which make more or less sense by people who seem to have mostly lost their mind. Almost every action they undertake is either simple and boring or stupid and without any logic. Not to mention the kids here, who seem a bunch of misfits, gathered together just to have something for the movie. It really is boring as hell, you don't get to see anything interesting, anything that may catch or attention or which might, at some point, bring even a tiny bit of suspense. I really am puzzled by the fact that somebody can consider this one a very good film. The characters a boring, the action is boring and even the finale doesn't bring anything to the film. It just ends, as abruptly as it starts. Almost pointless…The way I see it, it's a movie which has a series of boring and ordinary events and considers that if you bring something more or less controversial into the story, like an affair, some random stealing or some random sexual desires, you can make something great in the end. It doesn't bring anything interesting, it just creates drama from something dull and ordinary and expects the viewer to be amazed by its events.

First of all, this movie is based on a book written by Rick Moody, who was an raised in an upper middle class Connecticut suburb in the 70s. I watched the movie first and read the book after, and for me both are masterpieces.He (Rick Moody) wrote a fictional story, but we can see and feel that he is talking about the environment where he grew up and the the book depicts the hypocrisies and contradictions of society at the time, who was very traditional and conventional on the outside (men are breadwinners, women are attractive housewives, everybody celebrate thanksgiving, everybody aims to be part of the corporate world), but on the inside, the adults are insecure and irrational just like their children, despite their respectable looks and sophisticated language.The beauty of the film, is that the director Ang Lee invested a lot on the aesthetic factor ,casting perfect actors and making the audience nostalgic for a time when most of us were not even born. There are plenty of cultural references of topics that most generations today are not even aware of(like Richard Nixon, Poseidon Adventure, Jonathan Livingston Seagull).The movie was hardly watched because it was release together with Titanic, so bad timing contributed to the obscurity of " the ice storm"The story is very intense. Two prosperous families who are the typical role models for the American Dream are having a typical thanksgiving weekend. What all members have in common is that they are all horny, and are trying to have some sex (adultery for the adults, first experienced for the youth) and it appears that getting some of it is not making them any happier. They are normally miserable and frustrated despite their successes in bed, in their studies and professions.There is a very moving scene in the end when a wife gives some affection to her sobbing husband , and then we realize that this is the missing element in their lives. Despite their constant desire for more sex, they don't realize that they were actually were deprived of love.When I watch this movie, it always makes me feel like hugging the people I love.

The late '60s/early '70s were a hard era for everyone. Gone were the years of trusting the government, of listening to cultural norms; too cynical were the times. After decades of oppressive societal expectations, housewives no longer had to imitate Lucy Ricardo, the kiddos didn't have to reek of Cherry Cokes and wholesomeness, and the husbands suddenly didn't have to only bring home the bacon; they had to think about their feelings, too. Some thrived, some stumbled — putting out one's most kept secret emotions onto a table for everyone to see isn't an easy thing to do, after all. So you had your Bob and Carol and Ted and Alices, swinging away and having fun (for the most part), but you also had your bourgeoisie trying on the clothes of the open-minded and not knowing what the hell to do with them."The Ice Storm" is a flurry of sexual, drugged out, pathos infused liberties, perfectly capturing the simultaneously free and miserable echoes of its time period. None of the characters are happy, so much so that it seems fairly plausible that they miss the suffocation of the time in which they could mimic "Leave It to Beaver" and be contently empty. Ang Lee, pre-"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and post-"Sense and Sensibility", directs "The Ice Storm" not as a head-shaking cynic but as a voyeur helpless when approached by the lost decisions of Rick Moody's characters.Taking place over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973, "The Ice Storm" puts in motion a parade of maladjusted actions, specifically focusing on the Hood family and their neighbors, the Carvers. Mrs. Hood (Joan Allen) has picked up a shoplifting habit and is hardly speaking to her husband; Mr. Hood, in the meantime, is having a soulless affair with Mrs. Carver (Sigourney Weaver). And as Mr. Carver (Jamey Sheridan) busies himself with out-of-town business ventures, the kids of the families mostly hang around his home. Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci), a sexually curious 14-year-old, is in the process of attempting to seduce both Carver sons (Elijah Wood, Adam Hann-Byrd), either through make out sessions or show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine romps. The older Hood child, Paul (Tobey Maguire), is away at prep school, experimenting with drugs and attempting to win the heart of the damaged Libbets Casey (Katie Holmes). All of these characters are like trains ready to derail, and as an upcoming ice storm looms in the clouds, ready to destroy the premises, their emotions begin to mount until they reach an existential breaking point. "The Ice Storm" is not the kind of film you analyze, the kind you have all figured out before the closing tells you otherwise. This is a movie you want to observe, to listen to, to discuss later but savor in the moment. The plot is complicated, sure to tangle — but it effortlessly connects the dots like a well-guided Altman epic, brilliant in its conception and brilliant in how well each side-plot complements the other. It's a movie of heightened discontent, one in which the characters attempt to escape by utilizing their newfound freedoms (sex, alcohol, drugs) but realize that, deep inside, a larger void is waiting to be filled and material things can hardly do the job. The film causes an ache in our heart, partly because it's difficult to see people suffer so intensely and partly because we are just as much in the dark regarding how to end their misery as they are. They feel helpless, we feel helpless — it's a vicious cycle that stays unforgettable.The performances are phenomenal, the actors embodying their roles instead of keeping a safe distance away from them. "The Ice Storm" is a movie built on emotion and life-is- comedy situations, not worn out melodramatic devices — Lee, certainly one of the most versatile directors of the last two decades, keeps melancholy pumping and solution at a safe distance; in Tinsel Town, it's easy to invent a resolution for the sake of a happy ending. But things aren't so simple in "The Ice Storm" — agony is much more common than glittered fuckery.