'Fog' offers equal-opportunity conflict
By Glenn Lovell
Knight Ridder Newspapers
We experience it every day in this melting pot that has become a caldron, always threatening to overflow and ignite all in its path. It's what the talking heads on CNN call the "cultural divide" or "disconnect," that confluence of minor disagreements over customs and religious practices that can, and often does, escalate into something ugly and calamitous.
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"House of Sand and Fog," the powerful new adaptation of the Andrew Dubus III novel, is about such a breakdown in communication between two cultures attempting to occupy the same piece of ground. Directed by Vadim Perelman and co-starring Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley, it is easily the most relevant and important film of the holiday season.
Jennifer Connelly plays Kathy Nicolo, a recovering alcoholic, in "House of Sand and Fog." Connelly's character falls behind on the taxes for her home, which is later put up for auction.
A never-better Ben Kingsley plays Behrani, a former Iranian air force colonel who has fled his country and is now an American citizen. The transition has been a costly one: The Behrani family lived like royalty on the Caspian Sea. In San Francisco they lead a double life: By day Behrani works on a highway crew, picking up trash in an orange vest. His shift over, he changes into an expensive suit and goes "home" to a Nob Hill hotel suite, where wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and son Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout) live a charade of affluence.
As so often happens in the land of the free and enterprising, one person's good fortune proves another's nightmare. The seaside fixer-upper that Behrani bids on is home to recovering alcoholic Kathy Nicolo (Connelly). Kathy, near-comatose from the recent departure of her husband, has missed a property-tax payment, and the county has seized her home for sale at auction. Behrani gets it for an obscene $174,000 and, after some minor improvements, intends to resell it for four times that price, thereby returning to some semblance of his old lifestyle.
The catch: Kathy refuses to step aside without a fight. And why should she? It was only a small error in judgment, agree a legal-aid lawyer (Frances Fisher) and a more-than-professionally interested cop (Ron Eldard). This is obviously one more case of an "outsider" snatching up a real American's most precious holding: property.
As Kathy exhausts her legal avenues and the new owner stubbornly refuses to sell the property back to her, the situation spirals out of control. Kathy, now homeless as well as jobless, keeps showing up at the doorstep. Her do-gooder-cop boyfriend pays an unofficial visit. And the threats lead to blows.
As its title suggests, "House of Sand and Fog" is about the confusion and disorientation that result when the very foundation of life begins to shift and buckle. Under different circumstances, Kathy and Behrani might have been friends. Indeed, there's a moment when reconciliation appears possible. With their backs to the wall and circumstances exacerbated by deep-seated distrust, however, their futures and the futures of everyone in their respective orbits are set in stone. They are, sadly, a microcosm of us.
In a season of big, disjointed adaptations — including "Cold Mountain," "Big Fish" and "Girl With a Pearl Earring" — this one comes as a most welcome relief. Perelman, here making his feature debut, has done a terrific job of boiling down a difficult novel with dueling narrative lines. And, instead of trying to shoehorn everything in, he has relied on strong visual metaphors, such as bathroom-turned-prison and the ever-present Pacific fog, to capture the essence of the Dubus novel.
Of course it doesn't hurt to have one of the year's strongest ensembles. Connelly, building on her work in "A Beautiful Mind" and "Requiem for a Dream," delivers her most nuanced performance to date. She takes us into the mind of Kathy, a woman who means well but, still in the grip of old demons, buckles to popular prejudice. Kingsley, as always, is charismatic and commanding. His Behrani, blinded by hubris and lingering guilt (over uprooting his family), refuses to see what Kathy is going through until it's too late.
Aghdashloo, best known for her work with the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, is heartbreakingly good as the wife who clings to the Old Ways and, therefore, unwittingly enables her husband. Newcomer Ahdout and Eldard ("Black Hawk Down") are equally fine as the good son and Kathy's new cop beau. Both are fated to be swallowed up by the feud's fallout.
Yes, "House of Sand and Fog" is a demanding film. Some will call it "a downer." But don't let this throw you. In the current political climate, it's required viewing. We all need to think about tolerance and how, like sand, it can slip through our fingers.
