The Ice Storm 

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Every once in a long, good while, a movie comes along that haunts you. It's been several days since I saw Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," and there are still elements to this wonderful little film that waft through my consciousness every few hours or so. Whether or not you actually like a movie like this, the way this story is presented leaves its mark, like the afterburn of your retina after briefly looking into the sun.

Kevin Kline plays a father struggling to come to terms with his sterile marriage to Joan Allen and an unfortunate affair with his neighbor Sigourney Weaver. Their two families are involved in the younger generation as well; Weaver's kids have both had early, pre-pubescent moments with Kline's daughter, a terrifically brooding Christina Ricci. Kline's other son desperately wants the attention of a classmate in prep school, and journeys into a terrible ice storm to be with her.

The ice storm, of course, is a metaphor for everything else in this movie; Sigourney Weaver is so closed off to her emotions that her children wander around, searching desperately for meaning, ending in tragedy. Kline and Allen have a cold, distant engagement with one another—even the kids seem to talk to each other with the ironic detachment of folks three times their age.

The movie, ultimately, is about the questions of the '70s, but wisely lets the audience come up with their own answers. Was the sexual revolution taken too far, separating our moral code from our primality to the point where nothing seemed real anymore? Does the lack of a moral structure always come at the price of innocence? Ultimately, did we all escape the decade with our humanity intact? Pieced together with tiny fragments of conversation and quick cuts to different parts of the plot, Ang Lee lets us, the audience, become a tacit conspirer in the events that unfold. Fans of generational theory will love the movie—it is the ultimate Boomer nightmare. And the kids, the first vestiges of those who were later labelled "Generation X," have a swagger about them, a language and vernacular that is distinctly familiar to anyone who was a child during the "high 70s." It's impossible to see this movie without judging the circumstances with our decidedly neo-Puritan (post-'80s) values, but for a brief two hours, you're in a different world entirely. A world, I might add, that won't leave you for many weeks hence.

—Ian Williams

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