[.ca] House of Sand and Fog

From Amazon.com:
Jennifer Connelly followed up her Academy Award for A Beautiful Mind with this dark but moving story of small mistakes that escalate, with tragic necessity, to disaster. In House of Sand and Fog, Kathy (Connelly) gets evicted from her house for failing to pay a tax she never should have been charged in the first place. The house is swiftly put up for auction and bought by a former military officer from Iran named Behrani (Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast). When legal efforts fail her, Kathy turns to a sympathetic cop (Ron Eldard, Bastard Out of Carolina), who wants out of a loveless marriage and who's willing to step over legal boundaries if it might give him a fresh start. Topnotch performances by the entire cast make House of Sand and Fog a compelling psychological drama; your sympathies will be pulled in all directions. --Bret Fetzer

Mostly Good for It's Performances:
House of Sand and Fog is a hopeless but convincing tragedy about contested houses and broken pasts. It is morbid and profound enough to keep the riff raff away while also being flat enough to stray from any mainstream. I enjoyed the film for the same reasons critics probably enjoyed it. The film is carried by it's performances first and foremost and almost entirely. One of the more educated knocks on House of Sand and Fog is that the book is simply not really that transferrable toward the movie medium. I never read the book but the film and story stand enough to fuel three of the better performances of that year and also the greatest ensemble considering it's cost. First is Ben Kingsley who plays Colonel Berani, a man who was forced to flee Iran during it's revolution. He sees a similar home in San Franscisco with regards to it's view (in Iran his home oversaw the Caspian Sea beautifully). This new home was recently repossessed from Kathy, played by the beautiful and talented Jennifer Connelly. I genuinely want Connelley to show her range in the future but House of Sand and Fog is not such an environment. Here, Jennifer plays a women ruined by Alcoholism and being ditched by her husband. She then sparks up an affair with a married police officer named Lester, played by Ron Eldred, and the undermining to throw Berani out of the house begins. First time Director Vadim Perleman takes a subtle approach in the differences and similarities between the film's main characters. It was enough to make me walk away from the film wanting more but as if by osmosis the film won me over in perspective only days later. Watching the three main characters tangled in their flaws is enough to keep the film compelling. Berani is too proud and deaf to women, Kathy is too eager and manipulative and Lester is too idealistic and blinded by love. They are all ignorant to one another and completely void of empathy. Nadi is Berani's wife and she is played by the outstanding Shohreh Aghdashloo. Nadi is one of the only really likeable characters, because she is also the only one who sees the other's sides, but she is restrained by her submissiveness and her lack of English. Though heavy handed enough to obtain a brooding feeling that tragedy is inevitable, watching these characters fall is worth the wait if you appreciate this sort of film. Kingsly proves his versatility once again and upstages Connelly in that regard by a long shot. Connelly really just invokes the roles she's been celebrated for before this movie, although she is still quite effective and it revisits her type-casts a bit deeper. It is Aghdashloo that truely stands out and I viewed this film and her performance after the hype with some degree of suspicion. She is excellent. Overall, House of Sand and Fog is a downer. It wasn't as good as I hoped, given both the indie hype prior to it's release and the mainstream hype during and after it's release, but it was still pretty good. The cast alone makes the film worth watching but I would still imagine we will see more from Perleman in the future as well.

Tragic and moving:
House of Sand and fog is one of the most moving films of recent times. Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo should surely have won the Oscars for their brilliant portrayal of Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani and his wife Nadi exiled in America after the fall of the Iranian Shah. Colonel Behrani buys a home at auction at a knock down price in the hope of being able to make a profit and better his family's life. He is unaware that the house has been wrongly confiscated from Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connolly), a fragile recovering alcoholic who is determined to regain her home. When Kathy becomes romantically involved with Lester, the policeman who originally helped evict her, things take a turn for the worse. In an effort to help her, Lester loses sight of his professionalism and the situation becomes increasingly ugly as the Behranis' are threatened and Kathy starts to lose a grip of her sanity. The three main characters are all played with such skill and sensitivity that it is impossible to take sides or judge who is in the right. One can only feel deepest sympathy for all of them and fear for the outcome. This is a very emotional film, certainly not mainstream but well worth watching. Just make sure you have tissues handy.

to William L. Willard, Sr:
WoW, what ignorance! the kid could've been strapping on a bomb with his old man cheering him on???? such idiotic comment, do you even know where Iran is? that the Middle East is not one country? that people strapping on bombs represent about the equivalent of a drop of water in the ocean? ...oh well, I can't blame you, you are after all from the land of the free (or would that be of the ignorant??)

How can something be so good yet so bad?:
While "House of Sand and Fog" is beautifully shot and directed, loaded with fabulous performances by top-notch actors and does a great job developing the plot, characters and story, it manages to be a dissapointing movie. One of the biggest problems with it is that all the lead characters are unlikeable; snobs, bullies, deadbeats and washups who all seem far more concerned with trying to maintain an appearance of middle-class normalcy than with securing a stable place to live. The slow pace of the movie doesn't help it either, as the dispute over the house drags on and the characters lapse further into their respective neuroses, the story gets less believable. Eventually what could have been a poignant drama about human tragedy winds up as a depressing yarn about some jerks you wouldn't want to have as neighbors. This film has all the elements of a great movie, but my inability to identify with any of the characters, whose (despite excellent acting) actions throughout the movie seemed ludicrous to me, and its lagging feel left me somewhat unimpressed.

An astute drama about the tragedy of clinging to illusions.:
I didn't know what to expect from this DVD. After watching it 2 times, I realized that it is about the danger of living life for apperances. Indeed the title is apt because the house represents an illusion that the characters in the movie cling to so desperately. Jennifer Conolly plays Kathy, a recovering alcoholic whose husband has left her. She neglects to pay the taxes on a house which she has inherited, and ends up getting evicted. Ben Kingsley plays the Irani colonel,Berhani, who is reduced to working at a manual labour job. He and his family live beyond their means so that the daughter can marry into a good famly. In a desperate hope of recapturing the happiness of their past life in Iran, he purchases Kathy's house which has been auctioned off. The battle over the house escalates into the death of Berani's only son. Having lost his mind, Berhani kills his wife then himself. After realizing the horror of what has happened, Kathy relinquishes her claim to the house. She has once again gotten a foothold on sobriety. There is great hope for her even amidst this terrrible tragedy. The movie has been criticized for the character's behaving erratically and perhaps unrealisticallly. Perhaps the plot is over the top. But it seems justified in showing how dangerous it can be if one does not surrender one's visons of grandeur to what is real and solid.