Craig J. Clark
The community of New Canaan, Connecticut, may not exactly be a microcosm of American society. It’s a little too affluent and, let’s not mince words here, white to represent the whole in any meaningful sense. But the foibles of its residents (parents and children alike) gives a fair indication of the restless mood of the nation in the Fall of 1973, when Watergate was all over the news and a divisive Republican president’s second term was well underway – and seemingly primed to implode. This is the backdrop of Rick Moody’s 1994 novel The Ice Storm, and Ang Lee’s 1997 film, his second period piece after the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility. Lee and producer/screenwriter James Schamus have more on their minds than mere nostalgia, however.
While Moody’s novel opens with Thanksgiving “just past and quickly forgotten,” Lee and Schamus backtrack about a week to take in some of the gathering’s preliminaries. This offers the viewer a proper introduction to the four members of the Hood family – on the day of Nixon’s “I Am Not a Crook” speech, no less. Each in their own way is at a crossroads in their romantic and/or sexual relationships, and all are just about as honest with each other as the president is with his country.
Father Ben, who’s ostensibly living the American Dream, is having an affair with hot-to-trot neighbor Janey Carver (who is more casual about it than he is). Mother Elena is searching for some sort of meaning (mostly in books) while fending off the awkward advances of a local preacher. Son Paul is enamored of a classmate at his prep school who is way out of his league and jealous of his roommate, who habitually beds every girl he shows an interest in. And daughter Wendy is alarmingly sexually aggressive for a girl of 14, dividing her attention between the Carver boys, Mikey and Sandy, who are bewildered by her alien behavior.
To bring these characters to life, Lee assembled a top-flight cast, none of whom are merely playing dress-up in ’70s fashions. They are these broken people. Kevin Kline is the over-analytical Ben, who’s capable of turning off his wife and lover in bed and mortifying his 16-year-old son by giving him “The Talk.” Joan Allen is the brittle Elena, who has her suspicions about Ben’s extracurricular activities, but doesn’t confront him with them right away, choosing instead to freeze him out. (Note Kline’s expert hand acting when he tries to get intimate and she rebuffs him.)
As for their children, Tobey Maguire’s Paul is our ostensible narrator, dropping observations about the latest issue of The Fantastic Four into his voice-overs, and Christina Ricci’s Wendy is the most overtly political of the bunch, her outspokenness prompting Ben to tell her to “drop the political assassination stuff.” She’s the one watching Nixon on TV, but Paul isn’t completely apolitical, with a poster depicting Nixon and Agnew in prison clothes on his dorm room wall. Also on hand are Sigourney Weaver as Janey, Jamey Sheridan as her oft-absent husband, and Elijah Wood and Adam Hann-Byrd as their spaced-out and keenly observant offspring, respectively.
Naturally, things come to a head for all concerned the night of the freak weather event that gives the story its title. Ben and Elena attend a cocktail party they’re surprised to discover is a key party. Paul heads off to New York City for what he believes is a date with his crush, the curiously named Libbets (Katie Holmes in her film debut), but when he turns out to be the third wheel, he decides to do something about it. And the unsupervised Wendy ducks a liaison with Mikey to spend time with Sandy, inadvertently teeing up the tragedy that follows.
What stands out about The Ice Storm is how Lee and Schamus don’t judge the characters, even when they’re up to no good. There’s a great deal of compassion, especially for the children who sense their family is on the verge of splitting apart, and can do nothing to alter that trajectory. Most surprising of all, though, is how funny it sometimes is, like the moment where Paul notices the record they’re listening to in Wendy’s room – his record – is skipping, or Wendy’s less-than-reverent Thanksgiving grace. And who can forget the scene with the Nixon mask? Without these moments of levity, the film would be too dour, so striking the right balance was essential.
Released at a time when just about every major studio had an indie shingle (in this case, it was Fox Searchlight Pictures), The Ice Storm encountered rough sledding at the box office thanks to a slow roll-out that failed to build momentum. It also failed to garner any Academy Award nominations, as its predecessor did, but Schamus did have the Best Screenplay award he picked up at Cannes to console him. As for Lee, he found in Maguire the lead for his next film, the Civil War saga Ride with the Devil, which looked back even further into America’s past to explore the things that divide us.
“The Ice Storm” is streaming on the Criterion Channel in its full Criterion Edition, and as part of “The ’90s Do the ’70s” collection.
