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I never read Ron Moody’s novel The Ice Storm but from what little I knew about it, the book seemed impossible to translate into film. The story of two emotionally closed-off New Canaan families trying to connect with themselves and each other is distant and interior and made for the written word. Yet Ang Lee, who would later win an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, manages to make the interior exterior; or at least exterior enough to realize these people are encased in an epic malaise. The ones who try their best to break out of it are no happier than those who just wallow in it. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline, better known for his accessible sophistication but still a terrific brooder) is a Connecticut suburbanite, husband and father having a loveless affair with neighbor Janey (a cold, indifferent Sigourney Weaver). In fact, most of the adults are bereft of warmth and affection; connect any two characters and there’s nary a thread of warm feelings between them. Ben’s wife Elena (Joan Allen), looks like, and swallows her pride like, a proper ‘50s sitcom mom. But that’s about to change when she finds out about Ben’s affair. Janey’s husband (Jamey Sheridan) is away on business so much that when he finally graces his family with his presence, Janey won’t look up from her magazine and his sons Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) barely acknowledge him.

Everyone is looking for something to feel about or trying to figure out how to make themselves feel.  For the adults, it’s a function of their middle-age, middle-class ennui, as they transition from the swinging ‘60s to the tumultuous ‘70s of Watergate and Vietnam. For the kids, it’s their sexual awakening. Ben and Elena have two children. Fourteen-year old Wendy (Christina Ricci) is a Janey in the making. She’s partial to experimenting on Mikey and Sandy (“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”), and Sandy even has a crush on Wendy, looking down her jeans when she sits in her school chair. But the movie is really told through the eyes of Ben’s other child, Paul (Tobey Macguire). The movie begins with Paul returning home for Thanksgiving from a Manhattan prep school, so he’s the only character who has any idea of what it’s like outside the cocoon of Connecticut. Paul has a crush on rich classmate named Libbets (Katie Holmes), and later, when Paul has a chance to take advantage of Libbets when she’s passed out on the floor, his decision says volumes about himself and how he differs from the rest of his family.

The adults in the movie are stuck in the malaise of people who know there’s something wrong, but they don’t know what it is, so they can’t solve it. A crucial sequence is that vestige of the time, the key party. In a key party, the men put their car keys in a bowl and at the end of the evening, the women, without looking, pick a key and go home with its owner. It makes them think they’re still vibrant and swinging, but it’s really just a patch, a temporary salve to forget their problems. Really, it’s emotional immaturity, and that’s one of the interesting points of the movie, which is how the children are beginning to fall into the same pattern as their parents and vice versa. Everyone expects a 14-year old girl like Wendy to shoplift and try to cultivate their sexual power as adolescents do. But when Elena goes into a drug store and shoves cosmetics in her pocket, and when she considers the advances of a local religious leader, you wonder who is the child and who is the mother. Even Paul’s insecurity echoes his father’s, but his father’s excuse is more tragic: he’s a failed man, and the casting of the likeable Kline keeps the character from being too morose. And actually, before you pass on the DVD thinking the movie is an incredible downer, it’s not. Sure, it’s a tragic story of repressed emotions, but there’s plenty of humor and ultimately a powerful message.

One of the successes of the movie (some would say fault) is that it finds the most microscopic way to tell a societal tale. Not only are the emotions buried, but so is the point. The cultural transition dramatized here never seemed as dramatic as those from the war-torn ‘40s to the Leave it to Beaver ‘50s or from the Leave it to Beaver ‘50s to the Swingin’ ‘60s. But clearly for the moneyed middle-class, the ‘60s seeped into the ‘70s, yet the motivation was different. Instead of a reaction to the staid ‘50s, it was a reaction to the more Capitalistic expectations that were rumbling in society, ones that would manifest themselves, at least on screen, in movies like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. But in Ang Lee’s movie, the world is changing so fast, everyone is standing in place until they decide what they’re going to be next.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is presented in anamorphic video. I liked this transfer but I didn’t love it, though it is better than the previous version, put out by Fox. This is a more difficult film to transfer to MPEG-2 compressed standard-definition DVD than it seems at first blush. There are a lot of dark and somber colors that really lend themselves to pixilation if not carefully tended. Shadow detail was really put to the test, since so much of the movie takes place in dimly-lit interiors and during the dusky grey of winter. And there is some grain, more than I would have hoped given the challenges of compression, as well as some pixilation on walls during camera moves. Luckily, blacks were deep and solid. Detail in the darker scenes was equal to the brighter scenes in the movie. Those bright scenes, mainly autumnal colors, were well rendered and thick with color. The palette here is pretty chilly, but stops short of being desaturated to any great degree. Color accuracy is spot-on, with just a little of that ‘70s fade that the director was surely going for. Sharpness is a bit above average although random scenes were a little soft. Detail comes in at about average with finely grained textures, like the ornately designed fabric on the couches and the tweed of sport coats, also about average. Flesh tones were natural and looked accurate. The previous Fox DVD had a fair amount of grain and flecks. This print, supervised by director Ang Lee and his DP, removes any such imperfections. It’s a very clean transfer.

 
The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The previous Fox DVD had a Dolby 5.0 track which was remixed from the film’s original 2.0 surround. Criterion is in no mood for such audio tomfoolery, they stick with the original Dolby 2.0 mix. And it’s not a bad mix for such a talky drama. They managed to find areas to play with, without showing off or overburdening the soundtrack with useless noise. They get decent mileage out of the surrounds. There’s a big rainstorm during the movie and the pounding water seeped into the rears. Also, there’s subtle sounds of water actually freezing, which also creeps to the rears. Also, there’s a moment in the film involved a downed power line, which crackles and sparks to great, but not overbearing, effect. This is also indicative of the amount of detail, again, considering the nature of the picture. Mychael Danna’s Asian-influenced score benefits from this, with clean chimes and woodwinds.

Dialogue, which is ultimately the reason we’re watching this movie, is quite good. It’s clear and warm and some of the deeper voiced actors, like Kevin Kline, have a little bit of richness. Most of the dialogue comes from the center, which is fine. Too much directional effort with the dialogue would be distracting. There’s no real punch to the track and its dynamic range is limited, but that’s not the fault of the transfer. Not a lot of exciting, punch-worthy things happen in New Canaan, CT.

There are no alternate language tracks and subtitles and closed captions are in English only.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

The first disc of this two-disc set contains a trailer and an audio commentary by producer-screenwriter James Schamus and director Ang Lee. Schamus does most of the talking, which is fine because Lee’s accent can be thick. They talk in low-energy tones about the casting and the problems involved in getting the right ‘70s look, something that wouldn’t be cheesy, but still be accurate. There’s also an interesting anecdote about the New Canaan town elders who didn’t want the movie shot in their town because of the original novel’s bleak portrayals. A solid commentary that gets the job done.

On to disc two: Weathering the Storm is a 35-minute documentary that gives you a sense of how important the film was to the cast. This new effort includes new interview with Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver and Elijah Wood. Ricci and Wood were just kids, if even born, when the events of the movie took place, so they have an outsider’s perspective on how the characters acted during that time. Allen grew up in the Midwest with a stay-at-home mother, so she saw her own mother clinging to the post- war ways, while the world moved into the ‘70s. Everyone talks about his or her character, but since these are real actors, their insights are more interesting then the usual claptrap. Video levels in some of the new interviews look at a little hot, but otherwise the piece looks great. There are also good black and white production stills.

Ricky Moody Interview is a 20- minute chat with the author of the original novel. He said the process of going from book to movie is like “having a dream actualized.” He admits that when the movie was being referred to as “Ang Lee’s Ice Storm”, he realized that he was handing over his baby to someone else. He wasn’t that comfortable with it, but he certainly couldn’t argue about the results. Still, Moody has turned down numerous offers to adapt more of his work because he just didn’t like the idea of laboriously writing a novel and then having the screenwriter of, as he says, “That Darn Cat”, rewrite it. Moody is a bit proud, but I can’t say he’s not interesting.

Lee and Schamus at the MoMI is a 31-minute interview conducted at the Museum of the Moving Image. Recorded in November 2007, the interviewer is David Schwartz and the occasion of the premiere of Lee‘s Lust, Caution. The chat encompasses most of Lee’s film, not just The Ice Storm. If nothing else, find out why Ang Lee decided to direct The Hulk!

The Look of The Ice Storm is broken up into three sections:

Cinematography by Frederick Elmes is a 13-minute interview with the great DP (the Eraserhead to Kinsey). Backed by black and white on-set stills, Elmes talks about using early ‘70s paintings to find that heightened sense of natural light and simplicity, which is what they strove for in finding the locations and building the sets.

Production Designs by Mark Friedberg knew about the time he was designing. His father was an architect and he was the same age as the kids in the movie. Ang asked Friedberg about cubism and, most importantly, how do make the ice. Friedberg didn’t have an answer, and assumed it wouldn’t be a big deal. Instead, the ice needed to “more than frozen stuff… it needed to be a character… and it became a very complicated problem.” And in the end, who knew Broadway scenic guys would have the best suggestions?

Costumes Designs by Carol Oditz is eight minutes long. Oditz talks about diving back into that time to research the era. She always kept in the mind that the key was to “create a surface tension that was right for the character at that moment.” She resisted the urge to make the clothes graceful and not reminiscent of The Brady Bunch. She did a great job.

Finally on disc two are four deleted scenes. Taking them out became necessary when the movie clocked in at two and a half hours. One has the Kevin Kline character in a big staff meeting likening finances to a large, male organ and a female organ. There’s also more with Elena and the Reverend and their tiny flirtation. All the scenes are available with optional audio commentary by producer-screenwriter James Schamus. The video is created using the editor’s original three-quarter inch videotape dailies. The result looks like a workprint.

There’s also the standard Criterion booklet, which is filled with booklet-y goodness, including an essay by essay by movie expert Bill Krohn.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD- ROM features on this DVD.