Product Description

Academy Award winners Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) deliver stunning performances as two strangers whose conflicting pursuits of the American Dream lead to a fight for their hopes at any cost. What begins as a struggle over a rundown bungalow spirals into a clash that propels everyone involved toward a shocking resolution. "The surprise ending will leave you breathless!" (Clay Smith, Access Hollywood)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11224 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Running time: 126 minutes

From Amazon.com
Jennifer Connelly followed up her Academy Award for A Beautiful Mind with this dark but moving story of small mistakes that escalate, with tragic necessity, to disaster. In House of Sand and Fog, Kathy (Connelly) gets evicted from her house for failing to pay a tax she never should have been charged in the first place. The house is swiftly put up for auction and bought by a former military officer from Iran named Behrani (Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast). When legal efforts fail her, Kathy turns to a sympathetic cop (Ron Eldard, Bastard Out of Carolina), who wants out of a loveless marriage and who's willing to step over legal boundaries if it might give him a fresh start. Topnotch performances by the entire cast make House of Sand and Fog a compelling psychological drama; your sympathies will be pulled in all directions. --Bret Fetzer

On the DVD
ccDeleted scenes with commentary
Commentary with Ben Kingsley, director Vadim Perelman, and novelist Andre Dubus III
Behind-the-scenes featurette

Synopsis
Russian filmmaker Vadim Perelman makes his feature-film debut with the psychological drama House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III. Ben Kingsley plays Massoud Amir Behrani, an Iranian immigrant living the United States. Even though he was a high-ranking official in Iran, he works several menial jobs in order to provide his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and his son, Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout), with an apartment in California. He buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send Esmail to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer (Frances Fisher) and befriends a police officer (Ron Eldard). Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

An astute drama about the tragedy of clinging to illusions.
I didn't know what to expect from this DVD. After watching it 2 times, I realized that it is about the danger of living life for apperances. Indeed the title is apt because the house represents an illusion that the characters in the movie cling to so desperately.
Jennifer Conolly plays Kathy, a recovering alcoholic whose husband has left her. She neglects to pay the taxes on a house which she has inherited, and ends up getting evicted.
Ben Kingsley plays the Irani colonel,Berhani, who is reduced to working at a manual labour job. He and his family live beyond their means so that the daughter can marry into a good famly. In a desperate hope of recapturing the happiness of their past life in Iran, he purchases Kathy's house which has been auctioned off.
The battle over the house escalates into the death of Berani's only son. Having lost his mind, Berhani kills his wife then himself.
After realizing the horror of what has happened, Kathy relinquishes her claim to the house. She has once again gotten a foothold on sobriety. There is great hope for her even amidst this terrrible tragedy.
The movie has been criticized for the character's behaving erratically and perhaps unrealisticallly. Perhaps the plot is over the top. But it seems justified in showing how dangerous it can be if one does not surrender one's visons of grandeur to what is real and solid.

Mostly Good for It's Performances
House of Sand and Fog is a hopeless but convincing tragedy about contested houses and broken pasts. It is morbid and profound enough to keep the riff raff away while also being flat enough to stray from any mainstream. I enjoyed the film for the same reasons critics probably enjoyed it. The film is carried by it's performances first and foremost and almost entirely. One of the more educated knocks on House of Sand and Fog is that the book is simply not really that transferrable toward the movie medium. I never read the book but the film and story stand enough to fuel three of the better performances of that year and also the greatest ensemble considering it's cost.

First is Ben Kingsley who plays Colonel Berani, a man who was forced to flee Iran during it's revolution. He sees a similar home in San Franscisco with regards to it's view (in Iran his home oversaw the Caspian Sea beautifully). This new home was recently repossessed from Kathy, played by the beautiful and talented Jennifer Connelly. I genuinely want Connelley to show her range in the future but House of Sand and Fog is not such an environment. Here, Jennifer plays a women ruined by Alcoholism and being ditched by her husband. She then sparks up an affair with a married police officer named Lester, played by Ron Eldred, and the undermining to throw Berani out of the house begins.

First time Director Vadim Perleman takes a subtle approach in the differences and similarities between the film's main characters. It was enough to make me walk away from the film wanting more but as if by osmosis the film won me over in perspective only days later. Watching the three main characters tangled in their flaws is enough to keep the film compelling. Berani is too proud and deaf to women, Kathy is too eager and manipulative and Lester is too idealistic and blinded by love. They are all ignorant to one another and completely void of empathy. Nadi is Berani's wife and she is played by the outstanding Shohreh Aghdashloo. Nadi is one of the only really likeable characters, because she is also the only one who sees the other's sides, but she is restrained by her submissiveness and her lack of English. Though heavy handed enough to obtain a brooding feeling that tragedy is inevitable, watching these characters fall is worth the wait if you appreciate this sort of film.

Kingsly proves his versatility once again and upstages Connelly in that regard by a long shot. Connelly really just invokes the roles she's been celebrated for before this movie, although she is still quite effective and it revisits her type-casts a bit deeper. It is Aghdashloo that truely stands out and I viewed this film and her performance after the hype with some degree of suspicion. She is excellent.

Overall, House of Sand and Fog is a downer. It wasn't as good as I hoped, given both the indie hype prior to it's release and the mainstream hype during and after it's release, but it was still pretty good. The cast alone makes the film worth watching but I would still imagine we will see more from Perleman in the future as well.

Tragic and moving
House of Sand and fog is one of the most moving films of recent times. Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo should surely have won the Oscars for their brilliant portrayal of Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani and his wife Nadi exiled in America after the fall of the Iranian Shah. Colonel Behrani buys a home at auction at a knock down price in the hope of being able to make a profit and better his family's life. He is unaware that the house has been wrongly confiscated from Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connolly), a fragile recovering alcoholic who is determined to regain her home.
When Kathy becomes romantically involved with Lester, the policeman who originally helped evict her, things take a turn for the worse. In an effort to help her, Lester loses sight of his professionalism and the situation becomes increasingly ugly as the Behranis' are threatened and Kathy starts to lose a grip of her sanity.
The three main characters are all played with such skill and sensitivity that it is impossible to take sides or judge who is in the right. One can only feel deepest sympathy for all of them and fear for the outcome.
This is a very emotional film, certainly not mainstream but well worth watching. Just make sure you have tissues handy.