As the 1997 Supporting Actress Smackdown approaches, our celebration of that cinematic year continues. But of course, this project wouldn't be complete without a deep dive into the performance that almost made it to the Oscar lineup, representing a previous Academy Queen's comeback after years of unheralded work. In the 80s, Sigourney Weaver seemed poised to be one of those names who'd inevitably win a little golden man. However, after 1988's double nomination, awards organizations lost interest. Because of that, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm felt like a return to form in terms of sheer prestige, positioning Sigourney Weaver as an expected contender for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Unfortunately, the critical hit failed to secure any Academy Award nomination, a surprising result after a good performance that season. All these years later, Weaver's snub hurts the most…
Adapted from a homonymous Rick Moody novel, The Ice Storm tells a tragic tale set in the Connecticut suburbs. It's 1973, Richard Nixon flop sweats on TV while guaranteeing the public he's not a crook, chilly air plants frozen kisses on everybody's cheeks, and wealthy families prepare for Thanksgiving. It's a time of historical transition, and social upheavals permeate the air, whether in the form of teenage insolence or middle-age malaise. The truth is nobody seems happy with their lot in life, everyone's lost, and each generation longs to be another age. The adults crave lost youth, while the adolescents are all precocious, eager to grow up.
Ang Lee films it all soberly, crystalizing the period setting in rigid color palettes, evocative compositions, and editing patterns that ring with silent musicality. It's all very virtuosic, almost self-conscious, embalming a miserable story in formal idioms that share that same mood. While it's not near the top of the director's studies of repression, The Ice Storm is maybe his work where the theme most suffuses the screen, growing into a suffocating thing that's both intellectually sound and emotionally monotonous. It's a complicated animal, possessing a marrow-deep sadness that feels obvious but tastes abrasive.
One feels for the characters, all of them stuck in their ways even as the era they embody draws to a close. A death rattle echoes through the entire narrative, staining the elegiac tone with the ugliness of a decomposed organism futilely holding on to a life force it has already lost. Though he underlines his themes with a heavy hand, Lee never lets perceived judgment skew how he looks at the characters. Even as these people fall deep into spirals of self-destruction, the camera's perspective is defined by empathy, portraying shallow individuals with a kind of generosity they don't extend to themselves.
The story focuses on two clans, the Hoods, and the Carvers, as they navigate the holiday season, the complex webs of self-deceit they've all built around their souls. As usual in Ang Lee's filmography beyond Brokeback, the women fare better than the men in The Ice Storm. I might prefer Joan Allen's depressive kleptomaniac or Christina Ricci's politically-outspoken high-schooler, but there's no denying the magnetism of Sigourney Weaver. She plays Janey Carver, a bored but stylish housewife trapped in a failed marriage who's having an affair with the Hood patriarch, Ben. Bedecked in up-to-date fashions and heavy makeup, she's early 70s chic personified.
Nevertheless, Weaver doesn't let us ignore the disquiet brewing beneath the fashionable façade, illuminating the darkness within from minute one. She's introduced during a dinner party where the children play waiters and the adults put on acts of sexual sophistication. The liberation of the past decade has trickled upwards in the economic hierarchy, now commodified by suburbanites discussing the merits of Deep Throat with forced glibness. Yet, even in this performance of social laissez-faire, there's a sharpness to Janey. It's partially born out of Weaver's angular features, a visage that complicates every soft emotion with the pointedness of high-cheekbones and a harsh gaze.
However, Weaver's characterization doesn't rest on the laurels of her projected image. Beyond such surface-level aspects, there's a spike of provocation to how this hostess corrals her guests, children, and husband. It tastes like anger expressed in gestures of aggressive domesticity, the hint of a snarl when sitting beside her husband, and the way her eyes look for suspicion in his eyes as she pats her lover's wet crotch. It's like Janey wants to be caught, wants an argument, the electricity of violent confrontation. Maybe then she'd feel something beyond the stagnant ennui of this quotidian, mortally predictable. The actress cultivates a sense of danger out of this dissatisfaction.
In interviews, she has described the character as someone in a fog who's not driving their own life, a purely reactive entity for whom the denial of established routine is both an act of rebellion and natural behavior. Janey appears to be the strongest person in this cornucopia of sad sacks, though she's just as shattered as the others. Sure, the woman isn't making any efforts to have this fragility be self-evident. It's there nonetheless, and its revelation often feels like the guiding tenet of Weaver's performance. That is when she's not facing one of their biggest actorly challenges – dramatizing apathy.
Extramarital dalliances are played with not an ounce of excitement, and even the mother's anger at her children's antics is modulated by a palpable lack of interest in the little shits. Her attempts at being an active parental figure come off as Janey trying to fight against the fog, never entirely transcending the hazy barrier. Later, pushing Ben away, she's a spectacle of overtly rehearsed rejection, all performative dismissal, and diva-like superiority. Every time she's trying to break through the nothingness of her existence, it's notable how Weaver's Janey appeals to politely expressed rage. In a way, even the disruption becomes a system of repetition, a variation of monotony.
Compared to the other main characters, Janey Carver is barely more than a sketch, mostly built on scripted insinuations and all the subtext Weaver manages to bring to the role. These limitations become especially apparent as The Ice Storm reaches its end, keeping us from seeing the full flush of Janey's reactions to a series of calamitous events. There's the elegant swish of a roped keychain, zombie-like ambulation through an empty house that ends on her water bed, lying in the fetal position under a blanket of shadows. We leave her as she wakes up, her husband's cries in the distance, a final note of desolate void, a loss significant enough to shake her spirit waiting offscreen.
Sigourney Weaver won the BAFTA for her work in The Ice Storm, besting some of the eventual Oscar nominees. Additionally, she nabbed nods for the 20/20 Awards, the Satellites, and Golden Globes. Along with James Schamus' Cannes-winning screenplay, she seemed like the safest bet for the film come Oscar time, making their snubs all the more glaring. Instead of Weaver, AMPAS went with Kim Basinger in LA Confidential, Joan Cusack in In & Out, Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting, Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights, and Gloria Stuart in Titanic. Basinger won the prize, while Weaver hasn't yet achieved a fourth Oscar nomination after her golden run in the 1980s. Will that change, do you think, or has the Academy forgotten her forever?
You can find The Ice Storm for rent on most services.