movie review: The Ice Harvest (2005)
The Ice Harvest
John Cusack .... Charlie Arglist
Billy Bob Thornton .... Vic
Connie Nielsen .... Renata
Randy Quaid .... Bill Guerrard
Oliver Platt .... Pete Van Heuten
the ice harvest is not the funny movie everyone, including the movie's advertisers, has been making it out to be. okay, it's funny, but not in that feel-good, lighthearted happy way we all expect from the typical near-thanksgiving (in the US--sorry, canadianites) movie release. the clips the trailers show are the highlights of the movie in terms of chuckle-ability; the rest of the movie--its setting, context, plot, subplots, and characters--are dark, dreary, and funny in only a mysterious and disturbing way.
that's not to say the movie isn't good--no, not by any means. instead, the way the black humor in this movie works is by making the movie feel weird. when i walked in with my boyfriend and his best friend, we were all expecting some eye-grabbing, rip-roaring good time. i mean, what else is billy bob thornton good for? and john cusack? alas, what we had when we left was this strange sense of "something isn't right here." i think the background one needs before viewing the ice harvest is of the film noir sort.
in film noir, viewers don't know characters' backgrounds, their lives, where they come from, what they're doing. viewers are given no information whatsoever before the action starts in the movie--and the action itself is relatively subtle so as not to be very clear, hence one connotation of noir--blindness. the ice harvest does exactly that. additionally, there are no heroes as we understand them--there are only anti-heroes, or, at the very least, people we don't despise as much as the other people in the movie. john cusack's character in this film functions that way.
so, when you understand the genre of film noir, or black comedy, the ice harvest suddenly becomes much more interesting and much less annoying because it doesn't fit exactly into the pre-christmas holiday cheer mode. and, if that happy, snow-capped, rosy-cheeked, squinty-eyed feeling is what you want when you leave the theatre, i don't think the ice harvest will be the movie to deliver.
in the end, the actors did their jobs, and they did them well. billy bob thornton played his signature asshole role to a T; john cusack played the dark, stone-faced guy with a dark, stony past; and connie nielsen played a stellar bedroom-eyed, knife-concealing heart-stealer. and i have to give oliver platt props for playing the hilarious drunk guy for the entire movie and filming of the movie.
go see this movie. go. but just don't expect it to fulfill the role the advertisers have been creating for it. it's just not that kind of movie. as a john cusack lover, i believe this makes up for the horrible must love dogs--but as a billy bob thornton sympathizer, i don't think this movie gives him enough air time for the kind of actor he is.
in all, i give the ice harvest a B+.