Review of House of Sand and Fog (2003) by John R P — 16 May 2012

Throughout this movie, the talented Vadim Perelman uses beautiful cinematographic moments to enhance the already heavy melodrama that is 'House of Sand and Fog'. There are no better words to describe the genre of this movie than tragedy, and that's why so, so many of the reviews use it. It was exactly that, a tragedy. The talented Ben Kingsley was certainly a good choice to play the lead role here; no one can play foreign characters with as much attention to details, deliver high emotion with as much reserve as Kingsley. My last review (You Kill Me) where he was mentioned happens to have referred to this movie 'House of Sand and Fog'; since I hadn't seen it in many years and had not watched a good tragedy for a long while ('Million Dollar Baby' comes to mind as well as 'Gran Torino') I watched it again recently. I pondered on whether or not to write a review about it; I did not have to ponder too much.

Vadim Perelman, who wrote and directed the movie, has a rather short resumé, filmography wise, but the quality of his work sufficiently impresses me. He picked Jennifer Connelly to play the very very troubled Kathy, a character whose sole redeeming quality is her beauty; he could hardly have picked better for that very purpose. She is stunningly beautiful. The role is perhaps too demanding for anyone to deliver a convincing performance; Connelly did okay, and I say this with some reluctance because I don't know who could have done so much better. The supporting actors, Ron Eldard and Shohreh Aghdashloo, did very well and are convincing.

The story was extremely well developed and the direction flawless in my view. The classic, ending scene used as the short beginning scene, was daring; only great movies have done this successfully. It worked splendidly here. It did not come as any surprise to me that the ratings, from all my usual sources, were so unanimously favorable. I don't tend to watch tragedies a second time, especially if they are good; it takes too much out of us, so I keep the DVDs around to lend to friends who have not seen them. Action movies and romantic comedies are more the type of films we tend to watch again, so 'House of Sand and Fog' was that good. If you have not seen it, you're missing a contemporary classic.