Was Mikey a bit suicidal? - The Ice Storm (1997) Discussion

[–] CactusHazretleri 15 years ago

No, I don't think he is quite suicidal - he's just sort of indifferent; he seems to be the sort of person that goes through life observing it and enjoying it but not really allowing himself to get too caught up in it emotionally - note the way he just sort of cheerily turned his bike around in response to what Wendy said. I used to take walks outside in bad weather like that - I loved ice storms - when I was his age; it was a nice sort of meditative time in which the various pressures of life - the normal concerns one might have - would be forgotten amid the beauty of nature. As for the diving board bit, I think I myself actually did almost the same thing once - although I don't think I went all the way onto the edge of the diving board, it was still iced over a bit and above an abandoned, empty pool. Not one of my smarter moments, granted, but it is sort of liberating in a way to get that close to the edge of something that makes anything else that might be wrong seem totally insignificant. It's not a suicidal impulse so much as maybe it's the sign of someone looking for a deeper meaning and not finding it in the daily mill of isolated suburban life; perhaps mikey felt that only while jumping up and down and taking his life in his hands could he really get a handle on whether or not it really meant anything to him - again, it's not a strictly suicidal impulse so much as it is contemplative.

Hopefully that might help; that was my reading of it - any other ideas?

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[–] DryToast 15 years ago

Very good post, cactus. I see a similarity between Mikey's failure to catch the ball early in the film and his failure to act when he sees the power line come down. There may be a kind of dissociation going on in both cases, like he's watching himself in the situation but not really participating in it. The same sort of attitude might be necessary to take those dangerous steps out on to the diving board: the danger doesn't seem real because you're not really there, you're just watching yourself do it. It's as if you're testing how much stimulation it takes before it actually intrudes into your remote consciousness. I'll have to take a look at the novel again and see if the things we are both talking about are supported there at all. I do remember that Mikey in the book is much more of a sinister creep, something we'd never believe of sweet Elijah Wood.

I've been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out.

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[–] thbryn 15 years ago

He's spacey, though that may be the least of it and too much of a benign assessment. But there didn't seem to be any evidence that he wanted what happened, to happen.
As far as taking risk it happens frequently which is why insuring minors is so expensive.

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[–] danikka1 15 years ago

Hats off to Cactus.....one of the best responses I have ever read. I agree with all of it and you have a way of explaining the mind in a way that almost makes it understandable, lol.

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[–] CactusHazretleri 15 years ago

Why thank you! I always wondered whether anyone read these things, and now I see they do. That's good. They just showed the movie again tonight on HBO and I think I stand by my original post. It's crazy how strongly this movie manages to evoke my memories of growing up in new england - even though that was two decades after the action was set here. Something about living that far from your neighbors, not having a car, and everyone not having cellphones, ipods, or facebook lends itself to a completely different kind of existence than what most of us seem to be living today - at least where I am. I guess I'm not sure what to make of how much things have changed; having the world constantly at your fingertips may make you feel less lonely, but I'm not sure if ultimately you don't miss something by not being forced into that kind of contemplation.

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[–] CDM_moviereviewer 10 years ago

I agree. A powerful and emotionally evoking film, indeed. One thing I always wondered was if Ben was actually Mikey's father. It seemed implied, particularly at the end (and, of course, the affairs with J. Carver played by Sigourney Weaver). More so, the brothers looked nothing alike, and Mikey's younger brother seemed to look more like his true father (i.e., Jim Carver). By the way, as of today (2014/03/08) you can watch this great film again on Netflix Instant and, knowing the way Netflix Instant is, I would watch it before it is taken off.
-CDM

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[–] rivieran 15 years ago

Mikey reminded me of the unusual title character in J. D. Salinger's short story, Teddy

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[–] makschaef 12 years ago

I think he was just a little off. In comparison to American beauty, he was the Ricky first character. Always observing everything.

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[–] NiKoDay 11 years ago

Really interesting question. I think Mikey was in fact suicidal, but only through the lens of corruption and purity, and its affects on the innocents who have to deal with it, which this movie presents literally and symbolically in many, many ways. I don't think Mikey was looking to die so much as he was looking for anything that was pure and true in a world that seemed to hold none of that for him, his brother, or his closest friends.

Mikey wants purity, the purity of clean molecules, of the perfect space in his mind and imagination that cannot be touched by the corrupt, real world. It seems to me that purity like that can only be found in non-existence, whether as a young teenage boy Mikey could ever speak to this observation or not. In this sense Mikey actually reminds me a lot of Seymour Glass from Salinger's short stories. They hold a lot of the same conflicts within them, though Seymour is much more on the nose about the conflicts inside of him than Mikey could ever be. It's a credit to not only Elijah, but Tobey and Christina that they could play these kind of conflicts so subtly and quietly at such a young age.

Mike's last speech to his brother about purity, about cleanliness, his fixation on these feelings while living in such a subtly corrupt and traumatizing world, a world where literally no adult is telling the truth about anything that's happening. Obviously it's hurting Mikey very, very badly in ways that, much like his own father, he has no emotional tools to express at all.

So Mikey's journey into the ice storm is a literal and symbolic search for the purity he described to his brother when he was helping him with his homework, (his brother dismisses this reverie with, "But I just need help with my homework.")

The ice storm is the physical manifestation of that free and perfect space in Mikey's soul. He's innocent and alive out in the woods alone, maybe more alive than he's been his whole life; in a place where his mind, imagination and the natural world meld into one last perfectly symphonic moment for him.

Is that journey suicidal? To my mind, the way Ang Lee presents it, it is, just not with all the expressive psychosis we have come to associate with the act of self murder in our current age of mass therapy.

Maybe the better question to ask about Mikey's ultimate fate is: did he achieve the purity he was searching for in his death? Well, that's a question we can never know the answer to until we take the journey ourselves.

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[–] ShannonTriumphant 11 years ago

Definitely not suicidal...just clueless! He was one of the first of the generation raised by "absentee" parents, who never taught their kids that you don't do stuff like skate around in an ice storm (hell, two of the parents DROVE in it!).

Also, people in that area (NY, NJ) are far less aware--and I mean NO disparagement here--of the forces of nature. My ex-boyfriend, who grew up in central NJ, pulled some majorly dangerous stunts, like swimming into rip-currents in California or climbing up Mt. Washington, NH, in a blizzard...and he was past college age!

Mikey was just pushing the envelope of experience...and it "Got him"! He probably had NO idea that metal, or even water & ice, conducted electricity. Thank his idiot parents and the educational system.

She deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.

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[–] ShannonTriumphant 11 years ago

Definitely not suicidal...just clueless! He was one of the first of the generation raised by "absentee" parents, who never taught their kids that you don't do stuff like skate around in an ice storm (hell, two of the parents DROVE in it!).

Also, people in that area (NY, NJ) are far less aware--and I mean NO disparagement here--of the forces of nature. My ex-boyfriend, who grew up in central NJ, pulled some majorly dangerous stunts, like swimming into rip-currents in California or climbing up Mt. Washington, NH, in a blizzard...and he was past college age!

Mikey was just pushing the envelope of experience...and it "Got him"! He probably had NO idea that metal, or even water & ice, conducted electricity. Thank his idiot parents and the educational system.

She deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.

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[–] NiKoDay 11 years ago

Considering Mikey's father was a brilliant scientist working on semi-conductors and the first silicone chips for coomputers (semi-conductors vault electricity from ppoint A to point B,) and Mikey clearly had inherited his father's scientific intelligence based on what he says to his brother and others...based on your stereotyping of an entire region of the United States, your post has got to undboubtedly be one of the dumbest posts I've ever read in a long history of reading dumb posts on the imdb.

Which isn't to say that I necessarily disagree with you. The thought that Mikey pushed experience to the limit as kids sometimes do is definitely valid, it just doesn't seem to address the soul or themes of the story to me personally.

But congratulations anyway! You've really achieved something special here. Someone should mint your post before you take it down in embrassment. It's truly a decent throught wrapped in utter and complete nonsense.

-----------------------
"What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it..." -Alvy

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[–] bjuvani 11 years ago

"To find yourself in the negative zone, as the Fantastic Four often do, means all every day assumptions are inverted. Even the invisible girl herself becomes visible and so she loses the last semblance of her power. It seems to me that everyone exists partially on a negative zone level, some people more than others. In your life, it's kind of like you dip in and out of it, a place where things don't quite work out the way they should. But for some people, the negative zone tempts them. And they end up going in, going in all the way."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119349/quotes?item=qt0200112

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[–] NiKoDay 11 years ago

An example of a brilliant post, IMHO. Thank you.

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[–] ed-pilling 10 years ago

I grew up in New England and whenever there was some strange weather event me and my sister used to go out in it. Don’t think he was suicidal. He saw the power line down and just watched it flipping around. It was at the very last second he realized he was in danger but didn’t have time to react.

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[–] Screen_Queen 10 years ago

This

No, I don't think he is quite suicidal - he's just sort of indifferent; he seems to be the sort of person that goes through life observing it and enjoying it but not really allowing himself to get too caught up in it emotionally - note the way he just sort of cheerily turned his bike around in response to what Wendy said. I used to take walks outside in bad weather like that - I loved ice storms - when I was his age; it was a nice sort of meditative time in which the various pressures of life - the normal concerns one might have - would be forgotten amid the beauty of nature. As for the diving board bit, I think I myself actually did almost the same thing once - although I don't think I went all the way onto the edge of the diving board, it was still iced over a bit and above an abandoned, empty pool. Not one of my smarter moments, granted, but it is sort of liberating in a way to get that close to the edge of something that makes anything else that might be wrong seem totally insignificant. It's not a suicidal impulse so much as maybe it's the sign of someone looking for a deeper meaning and not finding it in the daily mill of isolated suburban life; perhaps mikey felt that only while jumping up and down and taking his life in his hands could he really get a handle on whether or not it really meant anything to him - again, it's not a strictly suicidal impulse so much as it is contemplative.

and this

I don't think Mikey was looking to die so much as he was looking for anything that was pure and true in a world that seemed to hold none of that for him, his brother, or his closest friends.

Mikey wants purity, the purity of clean molecules, of the perfect space in his mind and imagination that cannot be touched by the corrupt, real world. It seems to me that purity like that can only be found in non-existence, whether as a young teenage boy Mikey could ever speak to this observation or not.

Mike's last speech to his brother about purity, about cleanliness, his fixation on these feelings while living in such a subtly corrupt and traumatizing world, a world where literally no adult is telling the truth about anything that's happening. Obviously it's hurting Mikey very, very badly in ways that, much like his own father, he has no emotional tools to express at all.

So Mikey's journey into the ice storm is a literal and symbolic search for the purity he described to his brother when he was helping him with his homework, (his brother dismisses this reverie with, "But I just need help with my homework.")

The ice storm is the physical manifestation of that free and perfect space in Mikey's soul. He's innocent and alive out in the woods alone, maybe more alive than he's been his whole life; in a place where his mind, imagination and the natural world meld into one last perfectly symphonic moment for him.

Is that journey suicidal? To my mind, the way Ang Lee presents it, it is, just not with all the expressive psychosis we have come to associate with the act of self murder in our current age of mass therapy.

Maybe the better question to ask about Mikey's ultimate fate is: did he achieve the purity he was searching for in his death? Well, that's a question we can never know the answer to until we take the journey ourselves.

sum it up so beautifully. I wish I could favourite these posts so I can go back and read them from time to time.

You heart me? What is that? Is that like I love you for pussies?

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