How many people have actually seen a glaze ice? Or know exactly what it is. The expression, almost equivalent to ice storm, hence the film title, refers to a meteorological phenomenon occurring when the rain, falling at below-freezing temperature but still in liquid form, forms a smooth and transparent ice coating around surfaces and objects. Beautiful, fascinating and mesmerising to watch, it usually causes only minor damages but, if extensive and prolonged, it can be one of the most dangerous winter hazards and in October 1994, oddly only few months after the Rick Moody novel was published, an ice storm caused an American Eagle Flight to crash near Chicago, killing all 68 people aboard.
The metaphor well defines the essence of The Ice Storm, the fifth direction of Ang Lee, whom once again emerges as a profound analyst of the human heart's fluctuations, also when, like in this film, they are frozen under a coat of superficial respectability and lack of real communication. Released two years after the worldwide success of Sense and Sensibility, the first real Hollywood movie of the Taiwan-born, USA-filmically weaned director, The Ice Storm is based on the homonymous and widely acclaimed Rick Moody's novel, to which, unlike some of its characters, the film remains faithful even if necessarily simplifying some of the narrative.
The story takes place around Thanksgiving 1973, marred by the Watergate scandal, and crosses two typical, actually stereotypical, upper middle-class families, neighbours in a pretty suburban leafy Connecticut small town, whose intertwined relationships are everything but pretty, frozen as they are in a superficial coat of respectability that hides, not even too deep, intense psychological damages that only the final drama, caused as well by the ice storm, might, and only might, be able to heal, as the tears of the two male leading characters at the end seem to suggest.
Ang Lee's observations are at the same time piercing and detached, an entomologist's detachment imbued of delicate respect and even empathy, well supported and enhanced by the soundtrack and the pace chosen by the director. Ang Lee confirms to be one of the most versatile directors of contemporary American mainstream cinema, able to switch with enough depth and craft from niche, art movies like this one and the earlier The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, to mainstream costumes film like Sense and Sensibility, from a superhero flick like Hulk to action movie masterpieces such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or borderline intimist portraits like Lust and Brokeback Mountain.
The Ice Storm has mostly received positive reviews but has fared very poorly at the box office, grossing not even 50% of its cost notwithstanding an excellent cast and the successful novel behind it. It is a pity though, as the movie, far from being an everlasting masterpiece, is nonetheless a choral movie very well written and directed that, if watched with an honest and open heart, could trigger some interesting, even if not necessarily unexpected, thoughts.
The metaphor well defines the essence of The Ice Storm, the fifth direction of Ang Lee, whom once again emerges as a profound analyst of the human heart's fluctuations, also when, like in this film, they are frozen under a coat of superficial respectability and lack of real communication. Released two years after the worldwide success of Sense and Sensibility, the first real Hollywood movie of the Taiwan-born, USA-filmically weaned director, The Ice Storm is based on the homonymous and widely acclaimed Rick Moody's novel, to which, unlike some of its characters, the film remains faithful even if necessarily simplifying some of the narrative.
The story takes place around Thanksgiving 1973, marred by the Watergate scandal, and crosses two typical, actually stereotypical, upper middle-class families, neighbours in a pretty suburban leafy Connecticut small town, whose intertwined relationships are everything but pretty, frozen as they are in a superficial coat of respectability that hides, not even too deep, intense psychological damages that only the final drama, caused as well by the ice storm, might, and only might, be able to heal, as the tears of the two male leading characters at the end seem to suggest.
Ang Lee's observations are at the same time piercing and detached, an entomologist's detachment imbued of delicate respect and even empathy, well supported and enhanced by the soundtrack and the pace chosen by the director. Ang Lee confirms to be one of the most versatile directors of contemporary American mainstream cinema, able to switch with enough depth and craft from niche, art movies like this one and the earlier The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, to mainstream costumes film like Sense and Sensibility, from a superhero flick like Hulk to action movie masterpieces such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or borderline intimist portraits like Lust and Brokeback Mountain.
The Ice Storm has mostly received positive reviews but has fared very poorly at the box office, grossing not even 50% of its cost notwithstanding an excellent cast and the successful novel behind it. It is a pity though, as the movie, far from being an everlasting masterpiece, is nonetheless a choral movie very well written and directed that, if watched with an honest and open heart, could trigger some interesting, even if not necessarily unexpected, thoughts.