The ice storm

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Movie
German title The ice storm
Original title The Ice Storm
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1997
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Ang Lee
script James Schamus
Rick Moody (novel)
production Ted Hope
Ang Lee
James Schamus
music Mychael Danna
camera Frederick Elmes
cut Tim Squyres
occupation

The Ice Storm is a feature film by Taiwanese director Ang Lee from 1997 based on the novel of the same name by US writer Rick Moody . The work produced by the film studios Fox Searchlight Pictures , Good Machine and others is assigned to the independent film .

action

New England in November 1973. At the time of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Affair , 16-year-old Paul Hood was experimenting with drugs at boarding school and fell madly in love with his attractive and intelligent classmate, Libbets Casey. Because she is only interested in his roommate and heartthrob, Francis, the shy and still virginal Paul takes refuge in the fantasy world of comics . He is particularly taken with the adventures of the Fantastic Four . The superhero family sticks together in the most hopeless situation, in contrast to his own, which is in danger of breaking up. Paul's father, Ben, has an affair with the attractive wife of his neighbor, who is supposedly always on business trips. Paul's aloof mother Elena is a loner and is reminded of her own childhood as she watches her daughter Wendy ride a bike. She gets herself back on her bike and even has lipsticks at the local drugstore. In front of friends, however, Ben and Elena keep up the bill and mimic the harmonious couple that led the only real argument about whether to resume couples therapy. Paul's younger sister Wendy, whom he calls only "Charles", condemns wars and US President Nixon, she calls her father a " fascist " and is attracted to the pubescent sons of the neighboring Carver family. She lets herself into her first sexual experiences with the constantly absent-minded Mikey, while she secretly desires the younger Sandy, a fan of military toys and explosives.

When Paul drives over to his family in suburban New Canaan, Connecticut for Thanksgiving weekend , the long-simmering conflicts surface. Wendy annoys her father when she utters a long tirade of hatred at the festive grace, including the killing and displacement of the Native Americans. Janey Carver openly reveals that she is bored of the affair with Ben and serves him coldly. At the same time Elena finds out that her husband has cheated on her when he tells about how he caught his daughter making love with Mikey at the Carvers' house. When the weather report warns of a heavy winter storm with freezing rain , Paul makes his way to New York to spend the rest of the Thanksgiving vacation with Libbets - in her parents' luxurious apartment. Paul's parents are leaving for a party at the same time. While a severe ice storm is falling over the region, Elena feels surrounded by sheer intrigue. Both she and Ben discover that the event is a so-called " key party ". At the height of the sexual revolution, at the end of the party, women fish one of the men's car keys out of a shell in order to be driven home by the chosen one and then celebrate the free partner swap.

Elena thinks the Halfords' party is just another chance for Ben to have fun with Janey Carver. Nonetheless, she wants to keep up appearances and stay until the end. Janey makes it unmistakably clear to Ben, who was hoping for a future together with her, that their liaison has ended. As a result, Ben gets drunk and an embarrassing incident occurs when Janey pulls a bunch of keys from the bowl that doesn't belong to him. While her husband sleeps off his drunkenness in the toilet, Elena takes the last key out of the shell, that of Jim Carver, her rival's husband. Despite Jim's concerns, Elena embarks on the adventure, but the short shepherdess in the car turns into a farce. Jim wants to take her home afterwards. On the mirror-smooth roadway, the car comes off the road and lands on an embankment. Elena and Jim do not manage to reach the house until early in the morning, where Elena meets her daughter Wendy in the guest room, who has spent the night with Sandy. A little later, Ben arrives at the Carvers' house. On the way home, he found Mikey, who had left the house to watch the ice storm, lifeless on the street - a torn power line was his undoing. The apocalyptic storm has made a physical sacrifice and the father wraps his arms around the dead body in tears, while the mother wakes up in the bedroom from the wailing of her husband.

For Paul, too, things didn't turn out as hoped. On his trip to New York, he unexpectedly meets his roommate Francis in Libbets' apartment. In order to get the rival out of the way, he offers him a sleeping pill, which Libbets then also takes. Half-stunned, she confesses to him, like many others before, that she only feels a kind of fraternal bond for him. Unfinished he is drawn back to New Canaan, where the train does not arrive until the next morning due to a power failure. To his surprise, his father, mother and sister are waiting for him at the train station. When the family is in the car and everyone is ready to go home, his father breaks down crying.

History of origin

The film is based on the 1994 published novel of the same name by the American Rick Moody. Moody himself grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut, including Darien and New Canaan, which is where the film is set. Screenwriter James Schamus adapted the critically acclaimed novel for the big screen. The film was shot on original locations in New Canaan, e. For example, the local library (151 Main Street), Saxe Middle School (468 South Avenue), Varnum's Pharmacy drugstore (91 Main Street), and Waveny Park (381 South Avenue). Other locations were New York and Greenwich .

reception

Ang Lee's drama premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival on May 12, 1997 . At the time, critics rated the film as an atmospherically dense, partly satirical portrait of the 1970s. At the same time, The Ice Storm was recognized as the best directorial work by the Taiwanese director and one of the best films of the 1997 cinema year. Also in the favor of the critics were the performances of the acting ensemble around Kevin Kline , Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver . In the USA, the independent film premiered on September 26, 1997 at the New York Film Festival and was officially shown the next day in selected US cinemas. In the United States he made a gross profit of “only” 7.8 million dollars (with an estimated production cost of 18 million dollars) and was therefore considered a flop. Even in Germany, where the film was released on December 18, 1997, it could not really gain acceptance despite excellent reviews. In 2003 he was included in the film canon of the Federal Agency for Civic Education .

Reviews

  • "The best work of the director of 'Sense and Sensibility'." (Chicago Sun-Times)
  • "About the beauty of the cold and the joys of a water bed." (Stern)
  • "A pearl in the middle of the fast food cinema." (TV feature film)
  • "Masterful chamber play that confidently reproduces the confusion and suffering of the 70s." (TV Today)
  • "Actually only one flawless film was shown in Cannes: Ang Lee's 'The Ice Storm', a quiet but moving, a small but infinitely precise and rich story from Long Island in 1973." (Berliner Zeitung)
  • "Masterfully staged family and moral history of a shrill decade." (TV feature film)
  • "Psychogram that goes to the heart and kidneys." (Cinema)
  • "Bitter-comical family satire." (Stuttgarter Zeitung)
  • “Humorous, biting, witty and with an eye on the essentials, he now reveals the innermost core of his main characters without dismantling or exposing them. In addition, an intensive camera, accurate dialogues and a cast that (...) belongs to the crème de la crème of American actors, as it should be for a masterpiece. " (TZ Munich)
  • “A private story as an image of society that describes the breakup of an American middle-class family in the 1970s and their longing for love, harmony and security. Only the sudden death of a child pulls adults out of their lethargy. With the help of this moment of shock, the impressively played film acquires philosophical and religious dimensions: an innocent victim opens the door to insight and repentance. In its dramaturgical structure, it bundles many figure threads into a dense, artistic network that, far from moral 'antics', condenses into a work that is as intelligent as it is humanistic. " (Film-dienst)
  • “Ang Lee's atmospherically dense, depressing portrait of the seventies. Captivatingly photographed with excellent actors. " (DVD & Video Report)
  • “Ang Lee, 1996 Berlinale winner with 'Sense and Sensibility', has perfectly adapted Rick Moody's bestseller of the same name and cast it ideally. The Taiwanese director, otherwise known for his warm-hearted films, dissects the inner workings of his protagonists like a surgeon and exposes their emotional depths. He never makes fun of the characters, but shows them as prisoners of themselves. Staged with a lot of sense for meaningful details and always closely based on the template, Lee knows how to turn the basically banal story into a true thriller . A surefire cineast tip! " (VideoWoche)
  • “Ang Lee is shedding a new light on the 1970s. The glaring parody of the 'Brady Bunch' is countered by the 'Sense and Sensibility' director with the emptiness of feeling and meaning of the post-hippie generation, symbolized by an ice storm that has been aesthetically brought into the picture. Atmospherically dense drama with excellent performance and occasional humor brighteners. " (Blickpunkt: Film)

Remarks

  • When Christina Ricci is asked by Kevin Kline to say grace on Thanksgiving, she indulges in a tirade about the cruelties of life. She gave a similar address in the movie The Addams Family in Crazy Tradition (1993), also while preparing for Thanksgiving.
  • It was the second film collaboration for Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. You had taken the lead roles in Ivan Reitman's political satire Dave in 1993 .
  • The young American actress Katie Holmes made her film debut with The Ice Storm .
  • The short content of the German DVD of Der Eissturm gives the year 1972 as the action time, but English-language sources date the events to 1973.

Anachronisms

Although director Ang Lee attached great importance to a representation of the year 1973 as true to the original as possible, some anachronisms crept into the film , although it is not known whether they happened out of carelessness or were consciously accepted.

  • The film briefly mentions the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a terrorist group in the USA, which only became known to the public in 1974 through the kidnapping of Patty Hearst , the granddaughter of the American media mogul William Randolph Hearst .
  • GI Joe's six-wheeled armed plastic people carrier , which can be seen on a table in the Carvers' house next to other toys, was only brought onto the market in 1983 by the toy manufacturer Hasbro .
  • In 1973, the term was parental unit (Original: parental unit) is not used. The term was first mentioned publicly in a Coneheads sketch on the NBC series Saturday Night Live, which aired on October 11, 1975.
  • The tampon pack, which is briefly the focus of the camera in the drugstore, has a more modern packaging design, while the one in a medicine cabinet has the contemporary packaging.

Awards

When it premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1997, the drama ran in official competition. The ice storm won the award for the best screenplay, but had to admit defeat in the race for the Golden Palm to the Japanese contribution The Eel by Shōhei Imamura and the Iranian film The Taste of the Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami . Ang Lee's work was u. a. awarded the Danish Bodil Film Prize and the Swedish Guldbagge as best American and foreign film. Sigourney Weaver received the British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress for her part as a seductive and faithless wife . Leading Actors Kevin Kline and Joan Allen have received nominations from the London Critics Circle Film Awards and Satellite Awards . The young actors Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci were u. a. nominated for a Young Artist Award , a prize for artists under the age of 18 from the fields of film, television, theater and music.

British Academy Film Awards 1998

  • Best Supporting Actress (Sigourney Weaver)

Golden Globe Awards 1998

  • nominated in the category Best Supporting Actress (Sigourney Weaver)

Australian Film Institute 1998

  • nominated as best foreign film

Bodil 1999

  • Best American Film

International Cannes Film Festival 1997

  • Best script
  • nominated as best film for the Palme d'Or

Guldbagge 1998

  • Best foreign film

London Critics Circle Film Awards 1999

  • nominated in the categories:
    • Film of the year
    • Director of the year
    • Leading Actor of the Year (Kevin Kline)
    • Leading actress of the year (Joan Allen)
    • Screenwriter of the Year

Satellite Awards 1998

  • nominated in the categories:
    • Best Actress (Joan Allen)
    • Best Supporting Actress (Sigourney Weaver)
    • Best adapted script

Writers Guild of America 1998

  • nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category

Young Artist Awards 1998

  • nominated in the categories:
    • Best Supporting Actor in a Film (Elijah Wood)
    • Best Supporting Actress in a Movie (Christina Ricci)

YoungStar Awards 1998

  • nominated in the category Best Supporting Actress in a Drama (Christina Ricci)

literature

  • Rick Moody: The Ice Storm. Piper, Munich 1996, ISBN 3492222773
  • Rick Moody: The ice storm. Little, Brown and Co., Boston et al. a. 2002, ISBN 0316706000 (English edition)
  • James Schamus, Rick Moody: The ice storm: the shooting script: screenplay, introduction, and notes. Newmarket Press, New York 1997, ISBN 1557043094 (English edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Ice Storm . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2009 (PDF; test number: 78 819 V).