Often, in order to understand a person, one need only look at their parents to explain their behavior. It's one of the oldest and truest psychological adages, and one of the more unsettling facts of life. Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) explores the correlation between the adult and the child in an intriguing and creative way in 1997's the Ice Storm. By showing parallels between the two generations, he paints a portrait of dysfunctional family life without resorting to tired situations and cliched arguments. He also sets the film on the week of Thanksgiving, which provides some ironic undercurrents, given the connotation of the "nuclear family" that is normally associated with the holiday.
The year is 1973, a time when Nixon's Watergate incident and the post-Vietnam experience caused lots of uncertainty and doubt. Kevin Kline plays Ben Hood, an unhappy Connecticut husband who experiments by having an affair with his neighbour (Sigourney Weaver). His teenaged kids are Paul and Wendy (Tobey Maguire and Christina Ricci), and they experiment with the sexual awakenings they're experiencing. The mother is Elena (Joan Allen), and she is barely keeping it together. Ang Lee proceeds to show the frayed relations between these characters: Elena shoplifts, so her daughter Wendy does too; Ben cheats on his wife, Wendy may be the girlfriend of Mikey (Elijah Wood) but ends up naked in bed with Mikey's brother; Ben and Elena attend a party where everyone gets drunk then swaps partners, the meek Paul goes to visit the girl of his affection (Katie Holmes) but a womanizing friend is unfortunately there -- and both get drunk and drugged before Paul's eyes.
There are as many laughs as insightful moments in this movie. Toggling between three or four subplots at any one time, there is an almost Robert Altman-LITE feel to the screenplay. One gets the constant sense that tragedy will strike, and the distinct impression that it will tie all of the story arcs and characters together simultaneously. In a sense, it does, particularly when the incident causes key figures to break down.
A minor quibble I have about the Ice Storm, though, is that the people portrayed are as cold as their surroundings. This approach would have worked better if perhaps incorporated in moderation with only some of the characters, but instead everyone remains unemotional and therefore, at times, unreal. It makes for compelling moviemaking, but causes a sometimes disappointing lack of depth in what could have been a classic picture.
