Barbara Garrick | Through the Shattered Lens

(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day. These films could be nominees or they could be winners. They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee! We’ll see how things play out. Today, I take a look at the 1988 best picture nominee, Working Girl!)

Welcome to the 80s!

Yes, Working Girl is definitely a film of its time. It’s a film that’s obsessed with big things: big dreams, big offices, big money, and big hair. It’s a movie where the heroes talk about hostile takeovers and where everyone’s dream is to eventually to be an executive on Wall Street. You know all of those people who claim that The Big Short is the greatest movie ever made? I can guarantee that the majority of them would totally hate every character in Working Girl. Working Girl is such a film of the past that it even features Alec Baldwin doing something other than bellowing at people. In fact, Baldwin’s actually sexy in Working Girl. It was strange to see him in this film and realize that he was the same actor who currently spends all of his time picking fights on twitter and defending James Toback.

Of course, Alec Baldwin has a relatively small role in Working Girl. He plays Mick Dugan, the type of blue-collar guy who gives his girlfriend lingerie for her birthday (“I just wish you would get me something that I could wear outside,” she says as she tries it on) and who then proceeds to cheat on her while she’s off at work. From the minute we first meet Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), we know that she deserves better than Mick.

Tess is a professional administrative assistant. She’s just turned 30 but she’s not ready to give up her dreams and settle for a life of fighting off coke-snorting executives and coming home to some guy like Mick. (Speaking of early performances from infamous actors, one of the coke-snorting executives is played by Kevin Spacey.) Tess has got a bachelor’s degree in Business. As she puts it, she has a “mind for business and a bod for sin.”

She’s also got a new boss, an up-and-coming executive named Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). It turns out that Katherine is 29 years old. (“I’ve never worked for someone younger than me before,” Tess says as Katherine gives her a condescending smile.) Katharine encourages Tess to think of her as being a mentor. If Tess has any ideas for investments, she should feel free to bring them to Katharine. Of course, when Tess does so, Katharine claims that her bosses shot the idea down. It’s only after Katharine breaks her leg in a skiing accident and is laid up in Europe that Tess discovers that Katharine has actually been stealing her ideas and not giving her any credit for them.

What is Tess to do? Well, she does what any of us would do. She passes herself off as an executive and presents her idea to Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) herself. Jack is impressed with the idea but he’s even more impressed with Tess. Of course, complicating things is that Jack was once in a relationship with Katharine and Katharine still thinks that she’s going to eventually marry Jack. And, of course, there’s the fact that Tess is lying about actually being an executive…

Working Girl is a frequently amusing film, elevated by performances of Melanie Griffith and, in the role of Tess’s best friend, Joan Cusack. Add to that, Harrison Ford is remarkable non-grouchy as Jack Trainer and Sigourney Weaver appears to be having the time of her life playing a villain. Even as I laughed at some of the lines, here was a part of me that wished that the film had a bit more bite. At times, Working Girl tries too hard to have it both ways, both satirizing and celebrating Wall Street culture. In the end, the film works best as a piece of wish-fulfillment. It’s a film that says that not only can you win success and Harrison Ford but you can get your bitchy boss fired too.

Despite being a rather slight (if likable) film, Working Girl was nominated for Best Picture of 1988. However, it lost to Rain Man.

The 1997 film The Ice Storm is kind of a schizophrenic film, which makes sense since it’s set in 1973 and, just from what I’ve seen in the movies, it appears that the early 70s were kind of a schizophrenic time.

It’s a film that deals with two sets of people who all live in an upper class Connecticut community. One part of the film deals with parents who are freaking out about suddenly being adults. The other part of the film deals with the children, most of whom seem destined to make the same mistakes as their parents. It’s a film that is occasionally bracingly realistic and relatable, one that reminds us that being directionless in the 70s isn’t necessarily that different from being directionless in 2016. At other times, the film feels a bit too studied for its own good. This is one of those films that features a Tobey Maguire voice-over and, as good an actor as Maguire has always been, he’s always at his worse when reciting a pseudo-profound voice over. And then there are other times when the film feels a bit too cartoonish for its own good. Elijah Wood’s a stoner. Sigourney Weaver walks around with a bullwhip. David Krumholtz shows up as a character named Francis Davenport.

Fortunately, the film is directed by Ang Lee and Ang Lee is probably one of the few filmmakers who can overcome tonal inconsistency. Lee is so good with actors and is such a good storyteller that even his lesser films are usually worth watching. The Ice Storm would just be another silly sin-in-the-suburbs film if it had been made by any director other than Ang Lee.

The main adult in the film is Ben Hood (Kevin Kline). Ben is married to Elena (Joan Allen) but he’s having an affair with his neighbor, Janey (Sigourney Weaver). Elena may be upset when she finds out about the affair but she’s still willing to accompany her husband to a key party. A key party was a 70s ritual in which husbands would throw their car keys into a big punch bowl and then the wives would randomly pick a key and have sex with the owner. Basically, anytime a TV show or a movie takes place in the suburbs during the 70s, there has to be at least one key party.

And The Ice Storm‘s key party is kind of fun to watch. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen both give really good performances and Ben is such a loser that it’s fun to watch him freak out when Janey gets a key other than this own. Elena, meanwhile, ends up going off with Janey’s husband (Jamey Sheridan, pretty much looking the same in this 1997 film as he did in Spotlight and Sully) and they share a really good scene together, one that reveals that none of the film’s adults are really as mature or liberated as they claim to be.

While the adults attempt to play, their children attempt to find some sort of meaning to their empty existence. Ben and Elena’s daughter, Wendy (Christina Ricci), wears a Richard Nixon mask and enjoys sexually teasing her classmates, especially Janey’s youngest son, Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd). Ben and Elena’s oldest son, Paul (Tobey Maguire) is in New York, hoping to lose his virginity to Libbits (Katie Holmes) despite the fact that Libbets is far more interested in his boarding school roommate, Francis Davenport (David Krumholtz). Paul also compares his family to the Fantastic Four so, assuming Paul survived both the 70s and 80s, he’s probably still living in Connecticut and telling everyone who disappointed he was with last year’s film.

And, of course, there’s Mickey (Elijah Wood). Mickey is Janey’s oldest son and he’s permanently spaced out. When the ice storm of the title occurs, Mickey is the one who decides to wander around outside and appreciate the beauty of nature’s remorseless wrath.

Needless to say, the ice storm is also a really obvious metaphor for the way all of these very unhappy (but very prosperous) characters tend to view and treat each other. Despite all the attempts to pretend otherwise, everyone has a frozen soul. Nobody’s capable of maintaining any sort of real emotional connection. Of course, someone dies and everyone’s forced to take a look at the sad reality of their lives and the film ends with a sudden and spontaneous display of actual human emotion. It’s one of those ideas that probably works better as a literary conceit than a cinematic one.

That said, The Ice Storm is flawed but very watchable. I enjoyed it, even if it did occasionally seem to be trying way too hard. It’s well-acted and, if nothing else, I enjoyed getting to see all of the amazingly tacky clothes and the interiors of all those big houses. These people love their wide lapels and their shag carpeting. The Ice Storm is not Ang Lee’s best but it’s still good enough.