MOVIE REVIEW

House of Sand and Fog  (2003)

Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Ron Eldard
Director: Vadim Perelman

Rating: R

Studio: DreamWorks

Release Date: 12.19.03

Review Posted: 12.19.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara M. Fetters

American Dream Gone Awry in Heartbreaking "House"

Life pitches curves, rarely deciding to send things our way in straight lines. It’s how we react to those curves that shapes who we are, past experiences building together to get us through even the tightest of circumstances. Sometimes, though, the blackness of despair can become even too much for the most contumacious of us to handle. No matter what trails and tribulations have come before, no matter how many triumphs there have been, there is always the chance the latest test might be the one that undoes everything.

It is at such a crossroads two highly disparate individuals find themselves. In Kathy Nicolo’s (“A Beautiful Mind” Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly) case, beating alcohol and drug addiction wasn’t a window unto a fresh start. Instead it only led to her husband walking out, leaving her alone with despondence-ridden insecurities. Still, there is her Northern California seaside home left to Kathy by her father. If she can just make a go of it, hang on to the house and make it into something special, maybe she can reclaim a life nearly lost to addiction.

But that hope seems lost when a bureaucratic error forces the young woman’s eviction, the county selling the house at auction for a fraction of its worth, bought by former Iranian Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani (fellow Oscar-winner Ben Kingsley, “Gandhi”). Having fled Iran years earlier with his family, the proud officer sees this house as fulfillment of the American Dream he’s been pursuing since arriving in the country. A proud man, Behrani has been reduced to working menial jobs as a roadside construction worker and nighttime clerk at a mini-mart just to get by. He pours his entire life savings into the home, an opportunity to return to the days of prosperity and fortune his family once took for granted.

This strange duo; both wounded, both seeing the house as means to a better life; begin a slow tango of animosity. Kathy goes so far as to hire an attorney (Frances Fisher, “Blue Car,” “Unforgiven”) who prods the county into admitting their mistake, offering the Colonel his money back in exchange for returning the house. But he won’t have it. It was not his fault the county auctioned the house off erroneously, and until he’s paid current market value for the property Behrani and his family are there to stay. A battle of wills develops, Kathy placing her trust in unlikely ally Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon (Ron Eldard, “Black Hawk Down”) – one of the men who helped evict her – while Massoud places wife Nadi (acclaimed Iranian actress Shoreh Aghdashloo) and son Esmail (newcomer Jonathan Ahdout) painfully in the middle of the feud.

Based on the acclaimed novel by Andre Dubus III, “The House of Sand and Fog” is a devastating look at the American Dream’s many shapes and forms. It is a story where hopes – not hatreds – ultimately pillage, dividing two people who are searching for the same thing. Like a feverish dream that subtly morphs into uncontrolled nightmare, this is a movie whose moral underpinnings pulsate in uncomfortable eloquence.

This it’s not a film easy to enjoy. Kathy is a wreck, her plight a little bit hard to sympathize with. In one of the picture’s more unsettling ironies, her lawyer pointedly tells the young woman this whole mess could easily have been undone had the depressed woman simply opened her mail. Nicolo is a ball of insecure neurosis, not exactly someone easy to wrap your heart around. But, as the gifted Connelly plays her, the raven-haired Kathy is a far more complicated mess than she at first appears. A ball of rage, vacillation and disappointment, the woman is at a loss to explain the wreck she’s made, falling into a torridly self-destructive relationship with Burdon to ease the pain. It is a wonderful, deeply affecting performance; Connelly heartbreakingly proving her Academy Award was no once-in-a-lifetime fluke.

Kingsley matches her. Robbed of a second Oscar for his performance in “Sexy Beast,” the veteran performer puts to celluloid one for the time capsule. Behrani is a stately character feeling unjustly ignoble in his new land. Robbed of stature and prominence but trying desperately to keep the illusion of both, the former military officer cannot see the error of his shortsighted position on the house until it is far too late, the tragic consequences too difficult to endure.

The rest of the cast is equally as good. Eldard shows a range I never knew he possessed as the narcissistic Burdon. Seeing Kathy as a damsel in distress and placing himself in the position of the white knight rushing to her aid, the police officer sets loose a chain of events that lead to calamity. Eldard plays the deputy sheriff as if he’s falling into a blinding love for the girl, treading headlong into a maelstrom he’s no business becoming a part of.

As for Aghdashloo, there are not really words to express how wonderful she is. Nadi openly feels for Kathy’s plight, doing her best to befriend the young woman even as her husband attempts to write the girl off as a morally bereft lost cause. Yet, she also adores her husband, willing to follow him across the world to a country whose culture and language she barely understands. It’s a tough role to try and play, and the veteran actress finds all the delicate vacillations and idiosyncrasies residing inside Nadi. It’s a marvelous, exhausting performance and Aghdashloo is superlative in the role.

There are things I could nit-pick on. Making his film debut, commercial director/screenwriter Vadim Perelman depends a little too much on composer James Horner’s (“Windtalkers,” “Braveheart”) winsome score to pull him through the movie’s weightier moments. And while veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins’ (“Intolerable Cruelty”) photography borders on the stunning, there are times when I felt Perelman used his eerily backlit fogscapes too frequently. Still, the director’s work with actor’s is exemplary, and by allowing the movie to move at its own tragically languid pace he achieves a viscerally haunting dreamscape that sticks like an unavoidable nightmare.

Could it be better? Maybe, but I’m not complaining. Perelman and his cast achieve something remarkable, the picture hurtling towards an unforgettable climax. It lingers like a mist, calling into question the very fabric of everyday life. In many ways, “The House of Sand and Fog” is an imaginatively mournful masterwork; a complex narrative of culture and dreams that shatters like fine porcelain china crashing to a dusty floor.

Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)

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