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UPDATE: Several years have passed since I jotted down these first impressions of the film. I’ll always remember this review, because it was the first review that provoked the director of the film to write me a personal note of gratitude for taking his work seriously. I don’t say this to boast: I was, frankly, embarrassed that I hadn’t looked even closer and written a more polished piece. Frankly, this isn’t one of my better reviews. But I share it with you because Perelman’s note was a great encouragement to me, and it impressed upon me that I should write about art with the full awareness that the artist might indeed be listening, and so I should engage in criticism with honesty and respect, even if I’m offering thoughts on a film’s weaknesses.

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a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Directed by Vadim Perelman; written by Mr. Perelman and Shawn Lawrence Otto, based on the book by Andre Dubus III; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Lisa Zeno Churgin; music by James Horner; production designer, Maia Javan; produced by Michael London and Mr. Perelman; released by DreamWorks Pictures.

126 minutes. Rated R for nudity, sex and some violence..

STARRING: Jennifer Connelly (Kathy), Ben Kingsley (Behrani), Ron Eldard (Lester), Frances Fisher (Connie Walsh), Kim Dickens (Carol), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Nadi) and Jonathan Ahdout (Esmail).

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The premise does not sound like the stuff of great moviemaking. But first-time director Vadim Perelman captures a nerve-wracking, heartbreaking story in one of the year’s most accomplished dramas.

In Perelman’s adaptation of Andre Dubus III’s best-selling novel House of Sand and Fog, Sir Ben Kingsley (Ghandi, Schindler’s List) and his fellow Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) play two strikingly different characters in a tug-of-war over a valuable piece of real estate

Kingsley plays Massoud Amir Behrani, a former associate of the Shah of Iran who moves his family to the United States to rebuild their lives. Unaccustomed to living in poverty, Behrani works several jobs and watches the classified ads, trying to find a house that will replace the lavish estate they inhabited in their homeland. This is America, and he is exhilarated by the possibility that an immigrant can work hard enough to earn back the better parts of the life he has left behind. When he discovers that he can get a bargain by buying property that has been seized by the government, he becomes the owner of a house on the California coast that has great sentimental value for the woman from whom it was taken.

That poor evicted woman (Connelly) is Kathy Lazaro, a recovering drug addict and recent divorcee. In Kathy’s perspective, that house is all she has left, a thread that connects her with her father and her few happy memories. Without it, she has only her car for shelter. Arguing that the government had no right to take her house, Lazaro hires a lawyer (Frances Fisher) and fights for her father’s homestead. As she slowly realizes that the situation is irresolvable, she descends into self-destructive behavior, including an affair that compromises the marriage of a foolish, irresponsible policeman named Lester Burdon (Ron Eldard.)

While it is indeed a dark and troubling picture, House of Sand and Fog is one of the year’s best films, in that it gives us a horrifying portrayal of what happens when we take up “the pursuit of happiness” recklessly. A.O. Scott in The New York Times described it as “the story of two rights adding up to a monstrous wrong.” He is right in saying “There are no clear villains, no serendipitous, life-altering accidents, only the slow, inexorable escalation of hasty decisions and excusable lapses in judgment toward an unbearable final catastrophe.” It all adds up to “wrong,” but where are the “rights”? Certainly, the protagonists desire the right things, and they are engaged in a dispute over their “rights,” but are they right in how they pursue those goals? To this moviegoer, it seems they behave in self-centered and heartless ways.

Behrani, Lazaro, and the misguided policeman all want something desirable, but each of them is willing to take unethical shortcuts to get it. They want what they want, and they want it their way, without having to demonstrate any responsibility. Selfishness is disguised as generosity. Lust is disguised as compassion. No one looks to a Higher Power for help, consolation, blessing, or perspective. They all take things into their own hands, and they all pay the price. One rash act leads to another, until lives are ruined, and the heart of Behrani’s compassionate and caring wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is broken.

Speaking of Nadi’s heart, Aghdashloo makes this woman the heart of the film. She suffers from her husband’s undaunted sense of authority and domination, desperately trying to reason with him in pleas both English and Farsi. But she loves him anyway, just as she seems to love everyone. She is the only character we encounter who has a heart large enough for more than just herself. When she meets Kathy, she is filled with compassion. As Kathy’s rage and depression slowly corrode her spirit, Nadi strives to save her. Aghdashloo performance deserves Oscar attention, and so does Kingsley, who turns in one of his finest performances as this tormented, tempestuous man capable of both passionate idealism and terrible wrath.

Connelly, on the other hand, delivers yet another performance of marathon tears and relentless depression. Her natural beauty holds our attention, but her melancholy is all she employs. It is not hard to see why Burdon would be drawn to her; as a cop, he can regularly appease his desire to help the unfortunate every day, so a pretty victim can quickly become a dangerous project.

Perelman deserves applause, if not a nomination, for his direction. He wisely refrains from exaggeration or revelry in his characters’ despair. He respects his characters enough to keep from turning this into the sort of emotion-porn that made 21 Grams such a heavy-handed mess. This story could easily have been staged as a battle, its opponents polarized, but Kathy and the Behrani family are both capable of stepping down from their soapboxes and trying to meet as human beings. Perelman does his best to give us three-dimensional characters so we can care about them even as we wince at their decisions. He has a distinct and shadowy style that gives each scene an edge of menace, but he does not exploit style or draw attention to it; he is always quietly serving the story.

The conclusion does rise to operatic heights, and Perelman’s fault is in lack of vision just when we need some perspective. He seems to be trapped with his characters in the prisons of their own design, unable to see what might have saved them.

Some of the world’s most lasting conflicts stem from small errors of judgment. Some of the greatest heroes have fallen after taking shortcuts to achieve an admirable thing. The thread that binds House of Sand and Fog together is a yarn as old as David and Bathsheba… older than that, in fact. When we do not look to a Higher Power for help in our times of need, depending only on ourselves and our friends, we limit ourselves to flawed resources. Determining that we will be satisfied only by earthly things, we risk losing a part of ourselves when those temporal, fragile treasures are eventually torn away.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.