The Ice Storm (1997)

1973. Connecticut. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen are the Hoods, a couple whose marriage is in decline. Their neighbors are the Carvers, Jim and Janey (Jim Sheridan and Sigourney Weaver), whose marriage isn’t particularly riding too great a high. Kline’s Ben and Janey are having an affair. But Janey gets bored very easily with Ben any time he talks about his life. In fact, Janey seems bored by everything around her to the point I wondered what the fuck she’s doing in Connecticut with a family at all. She seems little interested in her sons, Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Hann-Byrd, “Halloween H20”), much less her husband, often away on business. Allen’s Elena eventually learns of Ben’s affair with Janey, not particularly amused by it. Tobey Maguire is the Hoods’ son at college, Paul, while Cristina Ricci is their daughter, Wendy. On the night of the Ice Storm there is a swinger’s party gathering up all the neighbors called “a key party”...the Hoods go as do the Carvers.

In the film there are digs at Thanksgiving, particularly the image of the Native American with a tear after seeing how man pollutes the good earth and Ricci at the dinner table praying in sarcastic thanks to how the pilgrims took the land eventually years and years later allowing them to enjoy the richness of what those actions provided. The adults are wealthy with vacant souls, seemingly vapid and empty people. Their kids seem to be following suit as the television often shows Nixon, Green Hornet, commercials, and news programs providing a sense of historical time and place. Ricci’s Wendy is sexually curious, Sandy uses firecrackers to blow up his model planes, Mikey goes out during the night and is electrocuted by a falling power line, and at the party, the men and women on opposite ends of Allison Janney’s living room prepare to select keys and go to separate rooms to fuck each other. One of the adults brings her son to the party…fucking hell.

The opening of the film has the power come back on while Maguire is in the train after a visit to Holmes’ home, having found some pills in the bathroom, as they (along with Maguire’s buddy, Krumholtz, who sleeps with any young woman he has an interesting in) eventually get quite zoinked as a result of the effects. Maguire didn’t take as much as they do so he’s at least able to function. This wasn’t exactly an “after Thanksgiving romantic affair” Maguire was anticipating.

The film left me all kinds of icky. I was just glad Maguire didn’t date-rape Holmes even as Ricci in bed with Hann-Byrd gave me the absolute disgust. Not that the swinger’s party left me feeling particularly swell. Jim and Elena end up as the final key while Ben goes to the bathroom to sleep off his drunk. They go to Jim’s car to try and make the most of their time together but the sex doesn’t exactly go according to plan.

Ang Lee gets the most out of how cold and grey the setting is. How the characters seem to feel, their emotional vacancy, the lack of real passion, as if life produces nothing but this chill…I think Lee’s talents as a filmmaker are so realized in this film. Before Mikey is killed leaning up against the bridge with the power line breaking, landing electrical current to metal, he just sliding around and breaking ice under his feet. He’s seemingly more alive than ever before, freely moving about the night. His mom is right the opposite. Weaver just moves through the film as if sex is an attempt to make her feel something…anything. How will she react to her son’s death. Kline’s Ben finding Mikey dead on his way home is followed by his own son stuck on the train as the power eventually returns and begins to move on the tracks again. One couple’s son is dead, another returns home. Elena finds Wendy in bed with Sandy, as Ben brings Mikey home. Jim weeps over the body of his dead son as Ben, Elena, and Wendy go to meet Paul at the train.

I hope the Hoods, after the death of Mikey, can find happiness after Mikey’s death,

and just appreciate each other. Unfortunately, it does take tragedy sometimes to rattle

us out of our dormancy, reconnecting us to each other.