When people reach middle age, the pressure is great, and the intimate relationship is gradually stranded. When life reaches the peak, it also reaches the most desolate.
More than ten years ago, Ang Lee's family ethics drama "Ice Storm" showed the desolation and helplessness of middle-aged plight.
At the beginning of the movie, accompanied by the bleak sound of bagpipes, a picture of dead silence gradually advances: vaguely, the branches are covered with icicles, and the ground is littered with branches and wires, a mess. A tram stood still, and the huge iron wheel seemed to be frozen.
There has just been an ice storm here.
The family of middle-class Ben and neighbor Jim also experienced an ice storm at the same time.
Thanksgiving is approaching, and Elena realizes that her husband Ben and her female neighbor Jenny are having an affair, and she speaks less. More indifference between husband and wife.
They've been in some couples therapy groups and haven't gotten much better. Children are worried about whether their marriage will go into "the dustbin of history".
At a cocktail party between neighbors, they talked about the popular key-changing game at the time. At first, they thought it was incredible and held a mocking attitude.
Ben didn't find solace in his lover, either, and Jenny said she didn't need another chattering husband.
Between Jenny and her husband Jim, there is no passion other than the "ripple" mattress like the ocean.
On the night of Thanksgiving, they all finally went to the abyss of depravity - the game of changing keys, in fact, the game of changing mates. It can be imagined that at that time, in the United States in the 1970s, the entire middle class of society was filled with a huge sense of emptiness.
Another line in the movie. Adolescents' curiosity and exploration of sexuality.
The 16-year-old Paul, on the one hand, maintains his virginity and yearns for pure love, but is compared to an idiot by his experienced partners, and then falls into confusion.
Paul's interpretation of family is like the relationship between the characters in the comic "Fantastic Four", the more capable they are, the more they hurt each other without knowing it. Family is like your antimatter, the void where you were born and where you go after you die. The paradox is that the closer you are drawn, the deeper you sink into despair.
Fourteen-year-old Wendy's confrontation with parental authority and a sex game between two neighbors for unknown reasons.
She kisses Mickey in the yellow-leafed clearing, and expects to sleep warmly with Sandy.
She didn't know what she was doing. The whole movie is cold, and the only good thing is that Wendy is wearing a big red dress and riding a bicycle through the street freely.
Compared with the confusion and ignorance of children, the indulgence and ignorance of adults are more tragic. For example, Ben said again and again, I don't know how it became like this.
One moment Elena learned how easy it is for her daughter to ride a bicycle, but the next moment she went to the supermarket to steal things. An affair, a steal, also seek some kind of stimulation, involved in the end of the tragedy.
Therefore, they are extremely powerless to teach children about love and gender.
On the night of the ice storm, adults and children play their games, but danger is slowly approaching.
The perfectionist teenager Mickey believes that the night of the ice storm, when all molecules stop moving, is the cleanest moment.
He played happily in the wind and rain, and finally died of electrocution.
At dawn, the middle-aged man who had indulged himself was not satisfied from the game, and wept in the face of the disaster.
They finally realized that a family ice storm will not hurt everyone like the weather, and the wind and rain will stop soon.
The only hope in the movie is left to Paul. Facing his beautiful girlfriend who was drunk, he still maintained his bottom line and rushed home before dawn.
Because of Paul, this ice storm will not be so sad to the end.
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