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House Of Sand and Fog (2003)
A powerful human story
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), through not bothering to open her mail, gets her house confiscated by the County and auctioned to pay of a debt which she does in fact not owe them. Behrani (Ben Kingsley), is a hard working Iranian immigrant leading a triple life, moonlighting on two menial jobs to pay for a lifestyle at home beyond their means. He sees the auction notice and buys the house at a knock down price, with a view to making a huge profit and climbing the social ladder. The film unfolds from there.
None of the characters are truly likeable, they have good qualities but are also flawed. This makes them proper rounded human characters and gives the actors a good chance to show their acting skills. Shohreh Aghdashloo and Jonathan Ahdout play Nadi and Esmail, a mother and son role that they were to repeat in 24 series four. Ron Eldard plays Lester, a sympathetic cop who oversteps his powers in trying to help Kathy.
To me, the film centres around Behrani and his stubborn refusal to see other than his own self interest, and his eventual realisation of what really matters to him. Ben Kingsley pulls this off remarkably well, we know he is a fine actor, schooled in Shakespeare, but even so his performance still impresses. He is well supported by the other main characters though. The message behind the film, issues behind tensions between naturalised immigrants and the incumbent (indigenous isn't right) population is not fully spelt out but you are given plenty of things to think about. The film uses symmetry to point out parallels, inviting you to compare. One obvious one is the viewing platform built on the house by Behrani which resembles the pier that we see Kathy walking on.
If you need to empathise with characters in films, then this one might be not for your taste. If you like a film you can think about, where the characters have good and bad sides then this is worth seeing. Apart from the realisation that Behrani comes to (the real climax of the film) and the lesser one by Kathy in the punch line of the film, there is not much character development. The development is in the plot, and how a chain of small events can lead up to something bigger.
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