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Even as the conflict over the house escalates, Behrani, Lester and Kathy all hold on to compassion and decency, and even show signs of a willingness to relent. None of these three people are particularly likable, but they all seem worthy of sympathy, in part because they remain capable of showing it. His motives are not entirely unselfish, and he seems to feed on Kathy's self-destructiveness, offering himself up as a steadfast protector even as he nudges her off the wagon and willfully risks his marriage and career to be with her. Her last lifeline is the kindness of Lester Burdon (Ron Eldard), a sheriff's deputy who helped evict her from her house and decides to help her get it back. It is the only source of stability she has, and the loss of it is like the breaching of a fragile sea wall, unleashing a flood tide of bad luck and self-destructive behavior. His principal flaw, a furious reluctance to relinquish control, is perfectly - that is, fatally - symmetrical with Kathy's inability to maintain control.įor Kathy, the house represents more than comfort and shelter - more, even, than a link with her scattered family and distant childhood. Aghashloo) and son (Jonathan Ahdout) to defend his beleaguered sense of patriarchal infallibility. Connelly seems a little blank, as if she were suppressing her smartness and agility to play a woman of greater passivity and lesser intelligence.īehrani is a man accustomed to command, and he exercises a sometimes brutal tyranny over his wife (Ms. The deepest pathos comes from the quietest performer, Shohreh Aghdashloo, who speaks very little (in Farsi and broken English) and whose eloquence resides in her weary, lovely face. Kingsley is an actor of formidable reserve, and when he lets it go, you feel as if the world itself has broken open. That household, with its polished brass coffee table and overstuffed furniture, is the emotional and dramatic center of the movie. For him the house does not just represent an immigrant's share in the American dream: taking possession of it is his way of refurbishing the dream of a vanished imperial Iran. He endures the humiliation of menial labor - working on a road-maintenance crew and behind the counter at a gas station convenience store - by clinging to the trappings of his former life, coming home from his jobs in tailored suits and a sleek Mercedes sedan. Though he thinks of himself as a fastidiously practical man, Behrani is motivated by much more than financial interest.

Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) buys the house at auction, hoping to restore his family's fortune by selling it at a profit. Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), who inherited the house from her father, is evicted for failing to pay a county business tax mistakenly assessed against the property. At issue between them is a modest piece of coastal California real estate - the house of the title - to which both seem to have an equally legitimate claim. The film's antagonists - an exiled Iranian military officer named Massoud Behrani and a housecleaner named Kathy Nicolo, who is recovering from years of addiction and the breakup of her marriage - are both acting in defense of principles that seem unarguable.

There are no clear villains, no serendipitous, life-altering accidents, only the slow, inexorable escalation of hasty decisions and excusable lapses in judgment toward an unbearable final catastrophe. Like Antigone, it is the story of two rights adding up to a monstrous wrong. In some ways, Vadim Perelman's film, an impressively self-assured directing debut, is more rigorous, or at least more Greek, in its understanding of tragedy than either Clint Eastwood's ''Mystic River'' or Alejandro González Iñárritu's ''21 Grams.'' ''House of Sand and Fog,'' adapted from the novel by Andre Dubus III, is one of several recent movies that try to harvest the terror and grandeur of classical tragedy from the everyday sorrows of contemporary American life.