Parables of Distance ("The Ice Storm")

I had a chance to see the 1997 film by Ang Lee called "The Ice Storm", and I found it fascinating. It is set in 1973, and follows the struggles of two families during a pivotal week, this being Thanksgiving. Both families are torn by conflicts and by urges that are difficult to explain, and they continue to resonate as much among adolescents as among adults.

A few of the scenes with the child characters are particularly moving. They capture the inarticulate and awkward as well as wondrous experiences that are so characteristic of this age. The scenesbetween siblings seem very authentic, with the mixture of aggression and the jockeying for position as well as the urge to establish some sense of commonality. The Toby McGuire and the Christina Ricci character have settled on calling each other "Charlie", a distancing mechanism that reflects how uneasily they strive to overcome the barrier they sense between them.

At other moments we have scenes of sexual awakening between friends, especially between the sons of the other couple and the Cristina Ricci character. Yes, the behavior is compulsive, irrational, frightening, and also very honest as it captures the fact that they become infatuated with each other. How to explain the changes that these adolescents are feeling? And is there any assurance that they will gain any more self-confidence as adults, especially when it is manifestly evident that there are tremors of discontent in their families that threaten to disrupt their lives like a storm that is capable of paralyzing and disabling them?

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As alluded to before, this awkwardness is evident among the adult characters, two couples who would seem to have fallen into a trap of despair where traditional relationships and roles seem stultifying. They are both well-meaning, open and generous couples, trying to be good parents but also bewildered by their own urges. One husband will have an affair with the wife of his friend, a particularly cold relationship with an absolutely frigid and self-centered woman played by Sigourney Weaver, capturing the end of the cycle of self-gratification as it leads to an arid emotional life.

I love the gestures of freedom. The sight of a young child peddling on a bicycle, the fall of autumn leaves, the need to explore their sexuality by revealing the sight of their genitals ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours"), the urge to shoplift that overcomes both mother and child. Yes, these are gestures of defiance but also attempt at self-definition as they push at boundaries that seem so suffocating.

The evocation of this period, at the beginning of the Watergate crisis, is also very evocative. It coincided with my early youth, and unfortunately I conserve few memories of this period. In my family we didn't really follow the news, and we were always made to feel like outsiders, stuck in a Mexican caccoon by immigrant parents who were desperately pining for the life and family they had left in Mexico, and unwilling to commit to this country.

I still recall the feeling of this period, though. There is this sense of an eternal autumn, one that contrasts with the spring and summer of a wondrous decade of expansion which was the 1960s. This was a magical period, and we are still living in the glow of the reflected light.

The 70s were another epoch. This family, as was the case with so many other families during this period, were trying to adjust to new roles and a new sense of needing to be open. In one particular instance it leads to a horrifyingly awkward scene where the father, played by Kevin Kline, tries to have a sexual talk with his teenage son who has returned home from prep school. The son cannot understand this impulse by his father, who uses tired, old-fashioned phrases such as "self-abuse" to refer to masturbation, and he falls into an understandable silence as he tries to resist what he considers an attempt to pry into his private life on the part of his father. We all need to set our boundaries.

The music is evocative, as well. I recognized Bread, and Elton John, and other groups. This was music that was played in the background everywhere, and even someone who was raised in a Mexican barrio such as myself and was only exposed to it from time to time. For me, it was tantalizing because it represented another world that was so near but, at the same time, so far away.

I'll share more of my impressions, and refine them further, at a later moment. Suffice it to say that the tragic event at the end seems like an unavoidalbe culmination to a process of self-destruction that was evident from the beginning. And yet, one feels immense compassion for the characters.