![]() Personal choices ultimately play a big role in the family’s tragedy, but there is a sense that the system has failed their hard work and dedication. The film’s attack of xenophobia is its sharpest, unflinching and memorable. It’s portrayed with beautiful understatement for the Behrani family, as Massoud suffers from working at multiple, menial jobs beneath his experience, talent and dedication. ![]() One of the movie’s insistent themes is the intrusion of the American system on the American dream. Is it Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly), a recovering drug addict from whom the house has been seized by the government for non-payment of business taxes? Or is it Massoud Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a former Iranian colonel who buys the house at auction, envisioning it as the investment that will right the off-course ship of his immigrant family’s dreams? Where this otherwise flawless film goes wrong is its inability to convince the audience to not choose sides between both parties in its central conflict: Who really owns the titular house? (That film was based on “Killings,” a short story by Andre Dubus, whose son wrote the source novel for House of Sand and Fog.) His slow-burn unveiling of the narrative’s inevitable tragic spin is significantly more involving than the way-too-obvious In the Bedroom. The film is exceptionally acted and competently paced by first-time director Vadim Perelman. This movie’s final act is so relentlessly depressing that, by comparison, that of Mystic River feels as sunny as The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Therefore, I found the movie disappointing.After all its emotionally apocalyptic debris clears, House of Sand and Fog is little more than a beautifully made bummer. Kathy comes across as the wrong one, the pushy, needy, weak, spoiled woman with a passive-aggressive attitude who can only manipulate or cry her way through life. However, the movie failed to produce the same effect. You really get the idea that two wrongs do not make one right. I read the novel and liked the fact that the writer did not take sides. They both are slightly unsympathetic, but the antipathy award goes to Lester, the policeman who embarks in the extramarital affair with Kathy, dumps wife and kids and starts threating Behrani until the bitter end. The only thing Kathy and Behrani have in common is that they both lie to their families. Throughout the movie she is constantly blaming someone else or on the verge of drowning in self-pity. Not the sort of introduction to elicit sympathy.Įnraged by being evicted from her house (because she was too lazy to open her mail), Kathy hires a lawyer and proceeds to manipulate Lester, a married cop, into doing some dirty work for her.Like most addicts, Kathy seems incapable to take responsibilities. The camera shows a dirty house and unopened letters on the floor. Kathy is introduced while on the phone, lying to her family. The man works two jobs, while his family seems blissfully unaware of what is going on. Behrani buys the house in a desperate attempt to redress is financial situation, thus starting an escalating fight with Kathy.īehrani is a stoic man, burdened with an impractical wife and a couple of children who are eating up all his income. This gloomy tale is about ex-addict Kathy (Connelly) being evicted from her house and Colonel Behrani (Kingsley), a refugee forced to leave Iran with his family due to the fall of the Shah.
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