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| Jennifer Connelly in House of Sand and Fog. |
House of Sand and Fog is a gloomfest from first to last. Writer-director
Vadim Perelman, adapting the novel by Andre Dubus III, has a much
greater affinity for fog than for sand. The main protagonists—Kathy
Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly), an emotional wreck who has been unjustly
evicted from the Northern California bungalow her father willed
to her, and Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), an Iranian exile
and former colonel in the shah’s Air Force who bought the bungalow
at auction—are destined to obliterate each other. Kathy’s feverish
attempt to reclaim her home collides with Behrani’s determination
to use it as a steppingstone to the American Dream for his wife
(Shohreh Aghdashloo) and teenage son (Jonathan Ahdout, a gifted
newcomer).
There’s something bullying about the film’s determinism—Perelman,
taking his cue from Dubus, offers the audience no light, no hope.
But at least he doesn’t villainize his characters—both Kathy and
Behrani, in their own ways, are in the right—and the performances
are amazing: Connelly, who has often mistaken posing for acting,
digs deep here; Aghdashloo, a film star in her native Iran before
leaving in 1978, gives us a portrait of a woman who is both dutiful
to her husband and ravaged by his iron will. Kingsley is most impressive
of all. His Behrani has been reduced to working two crummy jobs
in order to keep his family ensconced in a fancy apartment building,
but even in his convenience-store fatigues, he seems to be wearing
a colonel’s uniform. His pride has pathos, and in the end, when
he wails to bring back a wounded loved one, the full tragedy of
what he has undergone hits us like a punch in the stomach. (2 hr.
6 mins.; R) — PETER RAINER
Spotlight: Ben Kingsley
Twelve months before he
saw a script, Sir Ben Kingsley received a copy of the
Andre Dubus III novel House of Sand and Fog.
Dubus’s wife “sent it to me with a very
charming letter,” recalls Kingsley, on the cusp
of yet another round of Best Actor nominations.
“She said I’d been in her husband’s
mind’s eye when he created Behrani on the
page—that he’d used me as some kind of
scaffolding, some rough sketch.” In both novel
and film, Massoud Amir Behrani is a former Iranian
colonel who has settled in the Pacific Northwest, a
steely, complex character, shielded by a resolute
public persona. Fiercely protective of his wife and
children, prone to both rage and quiet self-sacrifice,
Behrani pitches his family into turmoil as he attempts
to hold onto a house purchased in a contested
foreclosure. Kingsley says he saw him as a character
straight out of Greek tragedy. “I’m happy
that I’m able to do what I started out to do,
which is to create great drama,” says Kingsley,
who’ll turn 60 on New Year’s Eve. “I
spent the first eleven years of my career bringing
Shakespeare to life onstage, and this has been that
kind of an exhilarating task—to know that you
cannot compromise because the writing is so excellent,
and that you cannot bring a stereotype into the
picture because the characters are just too originally
written.
-- LH
Opens December 19
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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