Ben Kingsley plays a former Colonel in the Iranian Army who with wife, son, and daughter flees to America when the Shah is deposed. A “great man, who interacted with kings and queens” is reduced to laboring on road crews and selling candy to teenagers. But he sees a great opportunity to buy a house for a song when it goes on the block at a Sheriff’s auction.
Jennifer Connelly is a recovering alcoholic who owned the house before falling delinquent on taxes. It turns out, the taxes were almost certainly assessed in error, but by the time she seeks legal relief, the house is already sold.
Willy-nilly, these two parties become antagonists, and we can understand the point of view of each perfectly.
A truly evil cop (Ron Eldard) falls for Connelly in her moment of distress. His wretched character enters like a freight train that drives the sad situation to a conclusion that can hardly be good.
Though on the first viewing I hated the way the story ended, on further thought and discussion, I see that there was almost no other way it could end. It comes as close as any modern story could to Shakespearean grandeur.
In addition to the magnificence of the drama on its own merits, I recommend that our readers watch this to gain an insight into the Persian character. It is consistent with the Persians I have met. It is a culture that has retained many traits that once would have characterized the typical American family as well, but which are fast disappearing here: future orientation, building a clean and elegant refuge from even a very modest house, proper cultivation of both the masculine and feminine aspects, patriarchy, self-respect, honor, and piety. This is an opportunity to learn something about a great civilization that the Republicans, in obedience to their true masters, appear to be hell-bent on destroying.
There is an unfortunate and needless skin-shot, but fortunately this is soon forgotten in the swoop of the dramatic development.
I saw it a long time ago. From what I recall, it also had a good message on how idolatry can ruin us.
Yes, using a Framian/Poythrissian perspectival analysis, that could be a thread to pull — wherever people not united to Christ are concerned.
However, from the “givenness” of the situation, which would involve rights, duties, goals, etc., all in view of a situation held together by common grace, I would suggest that that would not be a prominant perspective here.
I’m not sure about your rating on this one. The acting was good as well as the camera work, but the plot was too contrived. And how could a babe like Connelly not only clean houses for a living, but not have a single friend in a city she lived in all her life?
The cop is the most troublesome character. I think the writers/director wanted to present him as a misguided do-gooder on a psychological tailspin rather than pure evil. His “development” reaches towards the absurd, though. How does one go from a troubled boy scout to Norman Bates in the space of six days?
If the movie is a tragedy then the main character (Kingsly) must have had a fault that brought about the evil consequences. But what would that be? Pride? Sure he is proud, but this is not what drives the plot to its conclusion. Think about it. Would it have made any difference, at any point, if he were a humbler man?
Connelly’s character is as far from tragic as one could get. Hero’s are supposed to have one flaw, Connelly has nothing but flaws. The only thing she has that comes close to being a virtue is that she, towards the end, comes to view the Iranian family as being at least human. This is a thin reed to hang tragedy on.
But maybe this is not meant to be a tragedy. Perhaps it is meant to be a commentary on the clash between modern and traditional cultures — when they come in contact, they are mutually destructive. If this is what the movies is about, it does a good deal of concealing this fact.
JC mentions idolatry as the theme. This is certainly not what the film is about. Connelly’s character is so miserable that she could not even rise to level of being an idolater. The reason she wants the house back is because she needs a place to live and because she feels guilty for losing it since her father worked all his life to pay for it. Far from idolatry, there is little to indicate she even had a sentimental attachment to it.
As for Kingsly’s character, the only idolatry he could be said to have was that for his family. But given his worldview, family is the ultimate. And there is nothing in the movie that indicates this view is in any way a perversion.
My colleague and I usually agree on almost everything. (My wife tells me this frightens her.) But I don’t see anything great about this movie except for possibly putting a traditional culture in a positive light. I find it a pretentious fake, trying to devastate like a Sophoclean tragedy. What is really going on, though, is a series of plot twists that keeps the audience wondering what could possibly happen next. It is more like Shyamalan than Sophocles with the qualification that Shyamalan is at least able to pull off a “I didn’t see that coming” at the end.
But I will give my colleague the last word on this one. He is far better at penetrating movies than I and so I will eagerly await to hear where I have gone wrong.
I thought about the movie more over the night and have come to the conclusion that I have misread it.
Kingsly and Connelly are both trying to keep up an illusion. Kingsly’s illusion is that he wants his society (ex pat Iranians) to think he is still wealthy. Connelly’s illusion is that she wants her family to think she is happily married. The house helps both keep up their illusions. Thus it is a house of fog. But it is not sufficient to keep both illusions going. And so when the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon, it fell. And great was the fall. Thus in the end it proved to be a house of sand. From this you can draw any number of morals or themes.
If this is, indeed, the “meaning” I think the movie may improve a little. But just a little. For there would still be no sense of proportionality. Each characters’ illusions are based on some sense of pride, but not pride of the worst sort. One may even argue, given each characters’ sitz im leben, that their pride is honorable. But the gruesomeness of the ending, how did they deserve that? And how did their minor faults result in that?
It would be like a story of a young boy who dreamed of slaying dragons and evil knights who, in the last scene, finds himself standing face to face with a real dragon or real warrior. As if the point were: see where your dreaming might lead you.
There are many strands of thought that need to be pursued. For starters, however: I don’t model tragedy as requiring a heroic character. Rather, I propose this model: two or more stories that each have internal coherence and integrity, and each of which is part of the same world, yet the two stories cannot be harmonized, making the downfall of at least one of the protagonists to be inevitable.
Now, as to the criticism of plausibility, can anyone seriously claim that the plot of Hamlet or Othello is realistically plausible?
Not literally; but the point of human nature that is highlighted is; not the action details.
Connelly’s story is the one that is particularly implausible in a literal sense. But her situation (alone, yet desperate to keep the house) could easily be explained in a natural way with a suitable prequel. Moreover, even if traditional Americana would not lead to such a truculent deprivation of property without warning or due process, it is not at all hard to imagine civil government as such behaving that way. I fear our society is moving in that direction rather than in the direction of the Americana that we imagine in romantic moments, and that indeed was once to a large extent the case.
Such a coincidence. Just today, Yahoo has a truth-is- stranger-than- fiction story on house repo.