DreamWorks Pictures release of a DreamWorks and Cobalt Media Group motion picture "House of Sand and Fog" adapted from Andre Dubus II best selling novel of the same title. First time feature film director Vadim Perelman penned the screenplay with Shawn Otto, attached Sir Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly and then paired with DreamWorks Pcitures to complete the film.
Shopping a film idea in Hollywood is one of the most difficult parts of the filmmaking process. Even Orson Welles was dismayed at the hustling involved in stirring up interest with the key executives responsible for giving a green light to a project. And when that studio gives the go ahead, rarely is it in favor of the filmmaker exercising complete creative control over the production of the film. Unlike other first time feature directors, Perelman beat the pavement to get this film done. During the development phase of a screenplay, a studio will often seek out lesser known directors who have worked in film but not at the feature level yet. Here, the studio hopes to save some coin on the director and help bring the pic to life. In this context, the frosh director finds this a contrived situation because he or she can easily be replaced. In Perelman's case, if things did go bad, he could walk and take the script with him. By bring the script and the intent of the actors, he had real leverage to making this film happen his way. Not that DreamWorks in anyway made the production field a battlefield, on the contrary, the relationship between Perelman and DreamWorks was indicated to have been a very hands-off and nurturing environment. Perelman walked this path and found a good home to grow his craft and DreamWorks found a passionate and driven director that understood the collaborative film process.
In acquiring Dubus' "House of Sand and Fog", Perelman gave his assurance that he would stay true to the author's spirit of the novel. Dubus said in discussion that this was one of the reasons that he decided to go with Perelman's option for this title. Dubus was further to point out that he would not be talking about the film had he not supported the final storytelling product.
"House of Sand and Fog" is a compelling and complex story of two worlds interwoven by the ownership of a small bungalow in Northern California. Kathy Nicolo, played by Jennifer Connelly is evicted from her house for non-payment of a business tax on a business she never had. The house is put up for county auction, all the while Kathy struggles to regain her inherited house from the county through the assistance of legal aid attorney Connie Walsh (Frances Fisher). Amir Behrani, (Sir Ben Kingsley) a decorated colonel from the Iranian National Army who immigrated to America, sees the county auction as an opportunity to profit from the low price of the house, to leave his two job, road construction and gas station attendant working world behind him, unbeknown to his family, and regain his dignity within his affluent circle of Persian acquaintances.
Kathy, having no place to call home takes to sleeping in motels and as the money runs out, to sleeping in her Bonneville. One night, she parks her car outside of her recently sold home. As morning rises, she awakes by the noise of construction workers remodeling her old house. Here, she confronts the workers and in doing so, injures herself. Nadi Behrani, played by the diversely talented Shohreh Aghdashloo accepts this injured "bird" into her home and takes care of Kathy's injury. In each scene that Shohreh appears, she gives life and a human realism to her character, Nadi that few actors can deliver and this is reason enough to see this performance.
The only recourse to acquiring her house back is to sue the county, which Carol informs her "could take months". Kathy is desperate and her brief encounters with Deputy Sheriff Lester, (Ron Eldard) who escorted her out of her own house on that dreadful day turns to passionate encounters as each sees the other as an escape from their own webs.
Despite each character having traits of humanity, neither side can really back down from their stance on the house or the supporting characters back down from their stance on supporting the main character's actions. Kathy needs a home and Behrani needs the equity from the house to support his family. The end result is surprising and at reflection can seem too contrived by the author although compares similarly to a Greek tragedy.
Dubus approach to the novel was to devoid it of any moral or ethical preaching. He instead focused on the characters and let the character's nature lead the direction of the story. Perelman does keep true to Dubus' characters, plot and characterizations yet does soften the ending a little from the novel making a already difficult swallow a bit less cumbersome.
This is a very interesting story to watch as it unfolds although the intensity, and hence, the climax does not pick up until the latter third of the film. The performances are solid and attention to detail in production design, especially the Persian household, is significant from the moderately budgeted movie (16 mil USD). Having only seen the Persian lifestyle as an outsider, the furniture and house fittings seemed true to conform to what I have seen in Persian homes. The story does leave some holes through undeveloped subplots including Esmail's (Johnathan Ahdout) juxtaposition of how he exercises the deviant alternative youth behavior, the paper route that spells the existence of responsibility, an fitting in with mainstream America and the smile during his sister's very ethnic wedding. But maybe this is the microcosm of the story as a whole. That is, each element in the story has more multifaceted and multidimensional parts than is superficially seen.
