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MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a recovering alcoholic, loses her beloved home after the county mistakenly identifies her as
being delinquent in the payment of business taxes due on the property.
Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a refugee from Iran after the fall of the Shah, tries to regain some of his former dignity and
station in life as a military officer and confidante to the Shah with the purchase of Kathy's home on the cheap at a tax sale.
This small home with its view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance from a deck on the roof reminds him of the villa that he
once had owned on the shore of the Caspian Sea .
When the error of the tax sale is discovered, Kathy confronts Behrani to demand the return of her home. Unfortunately,
Behrani and his family are already comfortably ensconced in their new home and the county will only rebate to them the amount
of the tax sale to help her regain possession of her home, an amount that is no where near what the house is worth.
A tragic test of wills is set up between the distraught woman and this man of honor and integrity who does not feel that
he should be penalized once again by another government, this time for a simple clerical error.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"House of Sand and Fog" is a movie that develops the concept of the home, a place to live and one of the most
basic of all human needs, to the level of high tragedy as two very different people both lay valid claims to the same residence.
This is another one of those thoughtful movies that starts out with a simple premise and ends up getting more and more complex
as each of the claimants is forced to utilize increasingly desperate measures to assert their rights of ownership.
Much like the old children's' tale about "Brer' Rabbit and the Tar Baby," both Behrani and Kathy make decisions
that leave them ever more tied up in a legal, moral, and ethical thicket from which there may be no escape. This small home
becomes the setting of a modern day Greek tragedy in which there are no winners, only losers.
This home now becomes the scene of a fight with neither hero nor villain as both combatants are in the right with the
tragedy being that neither wants to back down. The sad result, of course, is that neither can envision the horrible consequences
that will occur in the future due to their inability to compromise in the present.
Jennifer Connelly has the lesser of two roles as a deeply depressed recent divorce who suddenly has had her beloved home
snatched away from her. She is able to bring all the pain and heartbreak to her role, an emotional roller coaster of a role
that offers hope one minute and despair the next. Then her role deepens into one of anger and even a desire for revenge as
she learns that her home was mistakenly stolen from her due to a clerical error on the part of a bureaucratic county agent.
Behrani, a refugee from Iran after the fall of the Shah, is a much more complex character and Ben Kingsley is absolutely
brilliant in bringing him to life, a life filled with pain and loss and great personal sacrifice. He is a proud man in the
old school tradition and a muslim as well. His word is law to the members of his family and his decisions are unchallenged.
Nevertheless, he is a loving husband and doting father and a man of great personal honor and integrity.
Behrani had sacrificed everything when he fled Iran, including a luxurious villa on the shores of the Caspian sea. Now
he finally has a new dream home that will provide comfort in the near term and the hope for a sizable profit later that will
allow him some degree of financial security after decades of menial drudgery. The kicker in this otherwise rather ordinary
ranch home is the lovely view of the Pacific Ocean from a deck on the roof, a view that reminds him of the one he used to
have from his old villa on the Caspian Sea.
He is not about to give up this new joy in his life and neither is Kathy going to give up her efforts to reclaim what
she believes is rightfully hers.
While "house of Sand and Fog" drags in parts and is about ten or 20 minutes too long, it can't be denied that
this is a special movie with two actors who are at the top of their game. Ben Kingsley gives a deeply heartfelt performance
as a one time proud Iranian old school aristocrat and a man who has sacrificed much to claim this one small victory out of
life. An Oscar nomination for Kingsley should be another victory for his role in this movie.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a recovering alcoholic, has been living in a state of severe depression in a home her father
willed to her after his death. Her husband has also left her and her mother has just called to tell her that she will be visiting
with her brother in about two weeks.
Suddenly sheriff's deputies appear at the front door to tell her that her home is being repossessed due to nonpayment
of back business taxes. Kathy is at a total loss at hearing this, but she is evicted nonetheless with all her personal property
and her few household furnishings. As her circumstances grow ever more desperate, she is reduced to living out of her car.
Her home, which has a view of the Pacific Ocean from the "widow's walk" on the roof, is quickly purchased by
Mr. Behrani (Ben Kingsley), now an American citizen but formerly a refugee from Iran after the fall of the Shah. He was an
important member of the Iranian military with close personal ties to the Shah and an expensive vacation villa on the Caspian
Sea. This small home reminds him of the villa that he used to own, and he is happy to have purchased it on the cheap at a
tax delinquency auction.
Ever since arriving in the United States, Behrani has been reduced to working at two blue collar jobs to maintain his
lifestyle and the appearance of personal importance. He still has his pride and his military bearing. At the end of each day
he walks into a hotel washroom where he cleans himself off and changes out of his work clothes into immaculately tailored
suits. He drives home in an aged Mercedes to his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and his teenaged son, Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout),
his only child still left at home.
To keep up appearances of wealth, Behrani and Nadi have just thrown a very expensive wedding for their daughter with many
of his fellow Iranian émigrés invited to this lavish affair. No doubt, the expense of this recent wedding has consumed a large
part of his savings, and he now has college expenses that will soon be due for his beloved teenaged son.
Behrani's plan is to sell his new home in the fall for close to $174,000, which is about four times what he paid for it
at the tax delinquency auction. The profit from this sale will allow him to quit one of his jobs and provide for a college
education for Esmail.
Kathy, meanwhile, discovers that the tax sale was an error since the home was a residence and not a business, so there
couldn't have been any business taxes due on the property. She drives over to her home regularly to demand that Behrani return
her home to her, but her pleas fail to move him due to his own plans for the house. After all, it was the county's error,
not his, so why should he have to pay for someone else's screwup? He has already lost everything once before to another government
and he is not about to let this happen again.
While Behrani maintains his state of moral rectitude and unyielding intransigence, Kathy enlists the aid of a layer, Connie
Walsh (Frances Fisher), to help plot a legal course for regaining the title to her home. Unfortunately, this promises to be
a lengthy process as the county will only rebate the tax sale amount of the house to Behrani for his giving up his title to
it, and he has dreams of selling it for far more money in the fall when the weather turns cooler.
Of more immediate help is one of the sheriff's deputies, Lester Burdon (Ron Eldard), who takes pity on her and offers
to help her cause. He tries to threaten Behrani, but Behrani remains unmoved. He is an old military man and has seen this
kind of a blowhard activity many times before in his long life. Lester falls into an affair with the very vulnerable Kathy
in spite of the fact that he has a wife, Carol Burdon (Kim Dickens), and two young children.
Lester and Kathy move into a rustic cabin on a small lake in the country to wait things out. And their list of things
to work out grow exponentially as she continues to have problems with regaining her home, Lester's wife fights to prevent
the breakup of their marriage, and problems soon arise between Lester and his superior officers after they find out that he
threatened Behrani with a gun, an illegal act for an officer of the law that borders on extortion.
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