Quick recap: Rich white people make really bad decisions, as do their rich white kids. During an ice storm, of course.

rich or not, everyone made bad clothing choices in 1973.

Fun (?) fact: There really was a bad ice storm in 1973.

My husband spent a great deal of the movie angrily confused because he can’t tell Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire apart. Is this a thing?

My thoughts: Despite my previous snark, in the genre of Rich White People Drama, The Ice Storm is quite good. Watching sad married people can be tiresome after awhile, but the performances in this film made me loathe everyone less than I normally would. It also helps that Ang Lee directed it, which added depth without overkill on the whole ice storm metaphor.

And now to the real star of the film: the ice storm. Being from Texas, I haven’t experienced ice in the way people up north have. Sometimes it accumulates enough that school is canceled but we all know it’s mostly because we needed a break anyway. But this was a legit storm! I don’t know how Ang Lee managed to create something so realistic but it totally worked. I was worried the metaphor might be too heavy handed ,like when you learn in middle school that birds symbolize freedom, but the storm really did tie everything together nicely.

As for the plot, I particularly liked that nothing was really solved. Everyone was just as miserable at the end, but with a new perspective on their miserableness, I think. In a strange way, I wouldn’t say the movie as a whole was depressing. There were sad moments, sure, but everyone just endured through them in the way that people back then did. I won’t give away the ending because I do have some self-control at times, but I imagine that the defining moment ultimately didn’t do much for either family in the end. They carried on as people tend to do, and for some reason, that comforts me.

Final review: 4/5

Up next: City of God