 |
|||
 |
 |
||
 | |||
 | |||||||||||
|
|
A Dreamworks release. Written by Shawn Otto and Vadim Perelman; directed by Vadim Perelman; starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. Released to DVD on March 30, 2004.  There is a fine line between serious Shakespearian tension and laughably over-the-top melodrama. The House of Sand and Fog crosses this line about an hour in and never looks back. The plot synopsis for The House of Sand and Fog is so esoteric and small in scope that it borders on comical. When Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is wrongfully evicted from her Northern Californian ocean view house, she is extremely angry to learn that it has been sold at auction a mere three days later to Iranian immigrant Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) and his family. Kathy spends the rest of the film desperately and recklessly trying to get her house back Judging from the way that Perelman lets the material unfold, placing little importance on details of any kind, it becomes obvious that the central theme in The House of Sand and Fog isn’t the house or the characters, but the metaphor of the house. Both Kathy and Behrani care about the physical structure of the house, but care significantly more about the home and the possibilities that the house represents than anything else. Dealing with a focus like this is a tricky proposition for any filmmaker because of the amount of dedication and effort necessary to get the audience to care about the meaning behind the image as opposed to the image itself. And it is here that Perelman fails. By including few if any details or explanations for why each of the character feels about the house the way they do, Perelman left me floating, wondering time and again why the characters chose to behave in the illogical and inconsistent patterns that they did. If the house was as important to Kathy, why did she let the situation degenerate until the point she was evicted? If Behrani was the working-class man he is portrayed to be (making ends meet by holding down a position as a construction worker and a clerk as a gas station), how did he afford a $2,000 month apartment, a Mercedes, buy a house over looking the water and still have enough money to quit his job? To its credit, The House of Sand and Fog does feature singularly strong acting performances by both Connelly and Kingsley. Connelly in particular has a comfortable and organic quality in her acting that really grabbed my attention in the more mundane, pedestrian scenes in The House of Sand and Fog. Sadly though, there aren’t many of these in Perelman’s film. A litmus test for the gullible, The House of Sand and Fog is a mess of confusing motives and hard-to-fathom situations surrounded by numerous cutaways to the Northern California wilderness. The presence of Connelly and Kingsley gives a competent flair and look to this production, but ultimately does nothing but bring a little extra professional respect to a movie that really doesn’t deserve it.
chris neumer yes, it's true: The author of The House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III was listed as being the "Defender of the Faith" in the credits of the movie, In the Bedroom. |
| |||||
