Do you note background books to gauge their possible relevance?
Being someone who can’t pass a bus ticket without picking it up and reading it, the answer is absolutely, yes. I was going to point to the whole table of books about women’s liberation in that hit-on-by-a-creepy-minister scene, but you beat me to it. (Must! Post! Faster!) It hadn’t occurred to me to press pause last time I watched
The Ice Storm, but even at 24 frames per second I had enough time to absorb the presence of Doris Lessing and
Fear of Flying, both of which I’ve read, and the Sartre, which I haven’t. (My friend Nic told me all about Sartre and his dealings with women while I was at university, and that was more than enough.) All three titles set the scene perfectly for what follows: each of the women in the film trying, in different ways, to reach for something more; that 70s cultural moment which made everyone feel they were supposed to be at it like – well – Rabbit/rabbits, but with very little idea how to go about it; false prophets, phoney therapists, new power structures that were often just the old power structures in a different hat.
Decent production designers and directors think hard about what books and posters and art would fill their characters’ lives, and use them to drop clues like breadcrumbs for us to follow. But Ang Lee seems to take it to an extra level – I’ve read quite a few interviews over the years where actors describe how he gives them a kind of bible of cultural references for their character, full of book titles, pages ripped from magazines, pictures of clothes, reviews of films. There’s a very techy but fascinating article in the American Society of Cinematographers archive (
https://theasc.com/magazine/oct97/icestorm/pg1.htm) that mentions how
The Ice Storm’s cinematographer, Fred Elmes, used a briefing from a production researcher on 70s fashion, politics and art to help him know how to light and shoot the story. That thrills me: the level of care, the technical expertise, the layering of visual references, like Leonardo making his tiny strokes of oil colour one over another, building them up until the paint isn’t paint any more but something breathing, deep and luminous enough to dive into… The thought and understanding and commitment behind Updike being on the bookshelf in Janey’s cold and troubled house, and
Watership Down behind the bed in Elena and Ben’s (trouble’s coming! But love will see us through!) is part of what makes the film so powerful. So much nuance; there’s not a chance of it being judgemental, or glib.
I have a theory about why you thought you’d seen the film, but hadn’t. It’s all down to the trailer. It was everywhere that summer, and – naturally enough, if you work in marketing – was all about the key party. It even re-edited the scene to make it look as if all the men were vying to go home with Janey, when the film makes it clear that by the time she picks a key a lot of the heat has gone out of the evening, and it’s already tipping towards hangovers and regrets.
I also have a theory about Janey. Most men I know who’ve seen the film think she’s manipulative and scary. Ask a woman, though, and I’d bet they’ll say she’s the most tragic of all the characters: too clever for the life she’s ended up in, not enough courage to definitively end it, waiting for a man to match her move for move, equally disappointed in them and in herself when they never do. Apparently it was Sigourney Weaver’s idea to shoot the scene where she comes back from the party and curls up foetally on the water bed; that, and the arcing electrics among the ice, were the two images that have stayed with me the longest. Though now I’ve also got Jim Crace, trees with leaves, bicycles, and at least two kinds of rabbit to add to my collection.
Oh and: that’s not a rosebush Sandy’s whipping. It’s a hibiscus, the showy, shiny,
ne plus ultra of 1970s suburban houseplant. Yet another example of Ang Lee’s Leonardo tendencies.
