The following contains spoilers, so please read with cautionThere was a strong wind and snow, and the sky and the earth had already melted into a vast and pure white, and a car drove away at this time. We couldn't see the driver's face, but it turned out that there was another car towing behind the car. And that's when the setting is a lonely and ethereal guitar and harmonica, and intense drums and strings are suddenly added, and a ballad that was originally eloquent suddenly becomes a grand and pathetic symphony – this is the opening chapter of the Coen brothers' classic film "Ice Storm" (1996).
Little did we know at first that the car that was being towed behind us would be handed over by a cowardly man to two thieves to kidnap his wife in order to blackmail his wealthy father-in-law, who would use the ransom money to start a business and buy a parking lot. Even the thief didn't understand this kind of operation, why couldn't this person just ask his father-in-law for a sum of money? People can't communicate, do they have to make trouble to this point? This gives the whole case a layer of black humor from the start.
A still from Ice Storm (1996).
Of course, the plan quickly got out of hand - like one car dragging another at the beginning - one thing dragged out of another, and everything dragged its karma, but no one would have thought that this "Ice Storm" movie would drag out a full five seasons of the TV series of the same name later. And due to the pick-up of word-of-mouth in the fifth season, it is only a matter of time before the sixth season picks up. Originally known as "Fargo" in English, "Icestorm" is a city in North Dakota, but literally it means "to go far." It did come a long way.
Although "Ice Storm" is not as compact as the Coen brothers' future "No Country for Old Men", it is more satisfying. The original movie not only tells a story, but also sets a specific set of aesthetic tastes and story rules, so that future generations can play with infinite creativity within the established rhythm like writing poems and lyrics. The creative elements that perpetuate this series include: the opening credits are "based on real events" subtitles, the icy Minnesota, the whimsical criminal plan, the little people who can't help themselves and make mistakes, the tenacious policewoman and the dumb male boss, the weird killer, the incompetent FBI, the unscrupulous big boss, the complex gangster, the promiscuous supernatural elements, the uncontrollable big **, and so on.
A still from Ice Storm (1996).
At the same time as the fifth season of "Ice Storm" aired, the "True Detective" series also aired its fourth season. You can clearly feel the benefits of having a stable framework. The success of the first season of "True Detective" is actually largely based on the personal charm of Rust (played by Matthew McConaughey), but unfortunately the entire series has never found its own stable aesthetic rhythm, from the protagonist's personality, narrative techniques, story background and the extent to which supernatural elements are introduced, the formula has been greatly changed, but it has never been able to replicate the level of the first season.
Of course, the rhythm also has its disadvantages: it will make the creator lazy, and anyway, regardless of the content, the rhyme will press you first. As the old saying goes: The zeze of a gentleman is cut in the fifth generation. What was originally a good idea, when used at a certain time, will also become a cliché. Although the reputation of "Ice Storm" in the fifth season is not bad, it has also experienced a process of high and low.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
The starting point of the story of the fifth season is most like the original movie. Dorothy Lane (Juno Temple), an ordinary-looking housewife, is suddenly kidnapped, and it is still her own husband who kidnaps her - but not the cowardly husband in the movie version, but a far-right "tough guy" sheriff named Roy (Jon Hamm). More precisely, Roy is her ex-husband, who ran away because she couldn't bear the domestic violence and instead married a meek and weak herbivore man, Wayne Lane, whose profession is the same as that of her husband in the movie, as is a small manager in a car rental shop.
Of course, the biggest difference is the heroine herself. Dorothy is no longer a weak and helpless housewife, but a strong-wielding and strong-willed warrior who can save herself and later actually save the entire family. Her battles with waves of bandits are quite believable: she skillfully uses the terrain and all kinds of life trivia when she is unarmed and physically unable to fight head-on. Although some viewers laughed as if they were dreaming back to being a ghost, the audience's hearts are undoubtedly completely on the heroine's side, and we hope that she can turn the danger into a disaster, even if the means are a little bizarre. As the saying goes, luck is part of strength. What's more, let's not forget that "Ice Storm" originally had a kind of free black humor, and there was no shortage of bizarre ways to die in previous seasons (such as gangsters being shot by children's darts, thieves being stoned to death by falling air conditioners, ace thugs tripping and headshots themselves, and the list goes on).
Stills from the third season of "Ice Storm".
Personally, I also really like the heroine's performance, her well-designed accent reminds the audience that this is a story that takes place in the American Midwest, her seamless transition between a warrior and a loving mother is amazing, and her very thin body is always surging with unyielding energy, so that the metaphor of comparing her to a "tiger" in the lines is not a lie. What's more, she has to accommodate her dull and stupid husband, has to hide the imminent crisis, half-coax and half-deceive like enlightening a child, and follow the good path, which is also a wonderful comedy in the film.
It was Dorothy who made Season 5 feel warmer, because the situation in Season 4 was precisely to set up a bunch of weird characters, but none of them were energetic enough to make people feel safe. However, a TV series is different from a movie in that it has a long time to fill. Soon we found out that the story of the fifth season only had one main line, Dorothy, and finally began to be alone in the middle of the whole show.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
"Ice Storm" has always been a multi-line narrative, and sometimes it is even too much. In the middle of Season 5, many people are looking for someone in the hospital, but in the end they cleverly catch the wrong person (the wrong person is still a nasty person who has a bad attitude towards medical care), which is authentic "ice"-style fun. But the storyline of Season 5 ends too quickly, and the parties quickly divide into two clear camps, and Dorothy's many arch-enemies easily turn into friends.
There was a great paradox in her fate, that is, she married Vane in order to find a meek husband, but such a man had (or should I say often) a very strong mother. What turned out to be a husband's physical domestic violence against his wife has now turned into a mother-in-law's mental abuse of her daughter-in-law. This kind of contempt in the eyes of the class level is a copy of the father-in-law to the son-in-law in the original movie, and it is precisely because of this that it triggered the bizarre crime of having to kidnap his wife and ask his father-in-law for money. In the drama version, after the mother-in-law learns the truth about Dorothy, she quickly reconciles out of sympathy. And this reconciliation actually happened twice, when the mother-in-law, who was the female president of a ruthless money-lending company, very generously gave the unwilling little policewoman a job as a high-paying personal bodyguard.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
Women help women", there have been countless moving examples (the one I saw recently was three migrant girls in "Flowers" who helped each other and started a business together), but the fifth season of "Ice Storm" is not counted - it is just a mechanical séance in the cloak of feminism, which is a kind of cheating:After all, this mother-in-law is so strong because of this domineering president, not only does she have the money to participate in the election of the chief of warning, but she can even directly call a ** to mobilize the army for the parliamentarians. This is the "money omnipotence" packaged by "women's mutual aid".
In the original film (and previous seasons), the "big boss" is not omnipotent, and the arrogance and strength of the commercial arena are not enough to deter the very uncultured Xiaoxiao - this is the diversity and complexity of the world. The gangsters in the movie version shot and killed the big boss who was tough and didn't pay the ransom without saying a word. In the world of "Ice Storm," dominated by wind and snow and serendipity, money has little practical use.
A still from Ice Storm (1996).
In the first half of the play, in order to portray the cruelty and ** of her ex-husband Roy, such a plot was designed: a woman who was subjected to domestic violence asked the iron-fisted sheriff for help, Roy first said a biblical truth and advised the domestic abuser, but the next morning, he went to visit and found that the domestic abuser did not change his life, so he simply pulled out a gun and killed him. Obviously, Roy only suppressed male power with stronger male power, replaced domestic violence with more brutal violence, and pretended to stand on the moral high ground. And the big capitalists used their money to interfere in the election of the chief executive and mobilize federal troops to besiege Roy's farm, which is nothing more than a copy of Roy's solution to domestic violence.
It is precisely because the séance of the machine easily sweeps away the friction between people, and the characters have no chance to break through and grow in the conflict. The policewoman is a permanent element of "Ice Storm", but the policewoman in the fifth season is definitely the thinnest ever. She chases away her lazy little white-faced husband, almost like a fire demonstration before the start of a movie theater screening, absolutely right, yet stale and boring. The audience can't help but ask, why is such a smart and brave policewoman subject to such a stupid and cowardly husband? The latter's exit is completely reasonable, but it is not very happy, because he has already rolled too slowly. And driving away such a waste man is not a dilemma, so it is not much growth.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
Let's recall how plump the image of the policewoman in the first season can be - this is not mainly to say that she is fat, but how complex the crisis she has to deal with: the case is bizarre, the confused boss stumbles, the loving old father persuades her to quit, and the beloved male colleague is a coward who does not dare to shoot - the only shot is made, and she herself is hospitalized. It can be seen that while there are infinite possibilities for word filling, the best ones may be used in the first place.
Dorothy has a distinct personality, but she has already completed her psychological arc at the beginning of the story, and she cannot back down or reconcile, and Roy cannot offer the option of reconciliation. Dorothy's mission in the second half of the play should change from self-preservation to mobilizing more female compatriots to awaken and resist, but the screenwriter used fancy methods to forcibly retrace her tragic past, and turned her behavior of resisting with female compatriots into an illusion. Dreams and hallucinations are also a lazy cheat.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
There should have been more dialogue between Dorothy and Roy's current wife, using her own experience to "rebel" against her with emotion and reason, and fight Roy together. This tests the screenwriter's understanding of human nature and mastery of the art of dialogue. And the screenwriter shamefully evaded. The editor arranges for Roy to inexplicably kill his current wife's father, who "happens" to see, and her transformation is complete. When Roy goes after her and wants to kill her, he "happens" to run into Dorothy's gun. All kinds of god turns, didn't AI come up with it, or the first draft?
Corresponding to the barren events and thin characters are the pompous and obscure "philosophical" monologues in the film. The characters can't convince the audience with their actions, so they have to use lines to fool the audience. For example, the eternal killer in the skirt in the film always refers to himself as "a man", and likes to explain the code of conduct of "a man" at length, which is even more annoying than Roy, who is full of misinterpretation of the Bible. There are a lot of killers with personality in this series, especially the one in the first season, in order to prove the worldview of "the law of the jungle", the money can be put aside and killed for free and extraneously. This is the real philosophical killer. And "a man" actually has no norms to speak of, and there is a serious disconnect between words and deeds.
Stills from the first season of "Ice Storm".
For example, he forcibly lived in the home of an elderly woman who lived alone and forced her to do laundry and cook for him. When the old woman's son came back and asked him to collect the rent, he hacked him to death. It is true that we can see that this son is an idle old man, and he is not filial to his mother, and he can even be said to be bullying her, but he is not guilty to death, right? After killing the old woman's son, the killer continued to live in her house with peace of mind, knowing that she herself had also been accidentally killed, and the killer went to take revenge with righteous indignation. The screenwriter probably wanted to portray him as closer than his own son, but did he ask the old woman herself if she agreed? Many characters in the whole play, like Dorothy's puppet dream, are hurriedly polished into human shapes, hastily at the mercy of random ones, just to complete the story.
The characters can't talk to people, but it's actually the first few seasons of the series that have become more and more problematic. Although philosophical speculation is a major feature of the original Coen brothers, they will only use it as an easter egg in the story, and will not let philosophy dominate. In fact, in the original film, the Coen brothers designed the dialogue to be very short and hilarious, and a "yah" (yah) can develop n meanings, so that in the end it seems to have no meaning - as if all human languages are still unable to explain the absurdities of their own encounters. The Minnesota version of "not ringing" is a sound "ah".
The fifth season of "Ice Storm" can only be regarded as half a good drama, although it is very close to current events, it can not hide its own tiredness and scribbling. This may be because the main creator Noah Hawley is too busy, and he has many projects in the future, including the "Alien" TV series. As one of the hottest screenwriters in the American film and television industry, Noah's career is now in the stage of spring breeze, but it is inevitable that there will be many mistakes. I've even started to worry about the quality of Alien. After all, to tell a good story, smart ideas are just the starting point, and you have to spend enough time to feel how the characters feel so that you can say what they really want to say.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
At the end of the movie version, the little thief who worked hard to get a box of ransom money wants to find a place to bury the money because he doesn't want to share the spoils with his accomplices. There is a fence between the white sky and the earth. Looking ahead, the exact same fence stretches to infinity, and the same goes for looking back. So the thief came up with a "clever" way to insert a small red shovel in the place where the money was buried. He didn't seem to think that if he could see the shovel, others would be able to see it. It didn't occur to him that although the shovel marked a position in front of the fence, he didn't really know where the fence was located. This is probably the American version of the carved boat for the sword, right? In my opinion, the story of the fifth season is as clever as this thiefI thought I could use some fashionable words and events to mark my own importance and timeliness, but I lost the real wealth of the whole series.
Stills from the fifth season of "Ice Storm".
By the way, due to the subtitle gimmick of "this film is based on real events" in the opening of the movie, in the era when the Internet was not developed, there were really people who went to the local area to find the box of ransom that was missing. I can only hope that the audience's luck will be better than these gold diggers, and I hope that the main creator can really bury the money back in the sixth season, so that those who are willing to continue to believe can find it.