Films

Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) delivers a masterful dissection of upper-middle-class malaise in this turbulent, star-studded drama. It’s 1973 Thanksgiving break in this seemingly placid Connecticut suburb, but all is not as it seems. For the Hood and the Carver families, buried tensions, infidelity, and secret desires have been simmering all season, and when an ice storm strikes, a chain reaction of confrontations boils over.

Written by Lee’s frequent collaborator James Schamus, the incisive adaptation of Rick Moody’s acclaimed novel won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay in 1997. With his poignant subtlety and wicked humor, Ang Lee explores family dysfunction and escapism with subtle cuts between parents and their children. Anchored by an extraordinary ensemble cast–including Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Christina Ricci, to name a few–The Ice Storm endures as one of the defining American dramas of the 1990s.

Discussion with screenwriter James Schamus (Impresario Award), moderated by Ben Mankiewicz, prime-time host of Turner Classic Movies.