House of Sand and Fog

As I watched "House of Sand and Fog," I couldn't help but be reminded of Chris Smith's 2001 comic documentary "Home Movie," which chronicled eccentric people with outrageous homes. Smith's subjects had poured their souls into these houses, and in turn the houses had become external manifestations of their owners' souls.

The California home in "House of Sand and Fog," by contrast, is a fairly nondescript little split-level that offers a very modest view of the Pacific Ocean. This house has infiltrated the souls of its main characters; unlike the free spirits of "Home Movie," the owners of "House of Sand and Fog" find themselves possessed by the home itself.

Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is a severe depressive, a recovering alcoholic whose husband has left her months ago. The only connection to her family is her house, which she inherited from her late father. The rest of her family, which lives across the country, does not know of her separation and subsequent mental collapse. They acknowledge her past alcoholism (it appears that she has been clean for some time), but are too distant to know about the divorce or the fact that Kathy is being forced to clean houses to make ends meet.

Kathy doesn't pay much attention to her own life, either; she has a stack of mail piled near her front door - mail that includes impending eviction notices for unpaid tax bills. The tax bills are a bureaucratic mistake, but Kathy hasn't bothered to respond to them, and before she knows it, she is kicked out of her house by county sheriffs. One of them, Lester (Ron Eldard) takes kindly to the beautiful, lost woman whose house is being taken from her; he offers to help her move and later, gives her a place to stay.

Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) supports a wife and son by working a pair of menial jobs - by day as a construction worker, by night as a convenience store clerk. He's an exile from Iran - a once-powerful dignitary who, it is hinted, had to move to the United States to escape the Ayatollah. Behrani is a noble man whose family and friends have no idea that he has been forced into a life of blue-collar desperation.

Behrani finds a perfect escape hatch from his frustrating life when he spots a house that is being auctioned for a mere pittance, a house whose owner seems to have neglected to pay her taxes, and whose true value far exceeds its auction price.

Thus begins a story of obsession, desperation, greed and the humanity that binds the bitterest of enemies. It's a matter of pride between Kathy and Behrani, both of whom have staked their personal lives on this house. It's a battle between Lester (whose interest in Kathy evolves from squinty-eyed pity to romantic infatuation) and Behrani - whose mutual arrogance and intransigence leads to unspeakable tragedy. It's a parable about greed; Behrani can do the right thing by selling the house back to the county for fair market value if only he weren't so attached to the financial opportunity. It's a redemptive story about Behrani's wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), whose maternal instincts drive her to rescue Kathy from her downward spiral.

"House of Sand and Fog" also operates on a subtle political level; we have Eldard's uniformed all-American shaking down Kingsley's downtrodden Muslim for property that by all rights belongs to him - but that the American is claiming on behalf of a tenuous moral authority. The parallels to American/Middle-East foreign policy are too obvious to be accidental, and it is a credit to director Vadim Perelman and novelist Andre Dubus III (whose novel provided the source material) that the historic undertones don't overshadow the characters or plot.

This is not a perfect movie. Perelman is a first-time director, which means we get at least a dozen ponderous shots of fog rolling through the sky, over the ground and through the exterior of the house. His utilitarian direction works well in the dialogue-heavy scenes, which allow the uniformly excellent cast (Aghdashloo being the very best among them) to interact in exclusively human terms. But his knuckle-dragging portent and full-moon obsession would look more at home in "Teen Wolf" than in a top-notch drama like this.

It was a gutsy move by Dreamworks to produce a somber drama like "House of Sand and Fog" given its rookie director and indie-veteran cast. The release paid artistic dividends - here is the rare studio movie that works on almost every level while giving full respect to a multiplex audience. It is also the finest Hollywood release of 2003.

Rating: ****