This is a good film. It’s based on a novel by Andre Dubus III, which I haven’t read*. It was the first feature film of Canadian director Vadim Perelman, who had made a reputation with music videos and commercials. Apparently, novelist and director worked together intimately. The cast, Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Ron Eldard, Frances Fisher, Kim Dickens, and Jonathan Ahdout, find every subtlety possible in the characters. This was possible because the characters are well conceived, multi-dimensional, and real. The story is pure Shakespeare. Two people have equally just claims to owning a house. Nothing special, just an ordinary little house with a view of the sea. One is an Iranian immigrant, played to perfection by Ben Kingsley, who desperately needs the house to hold his family together and retain his much injured pride. The other is a lonely woman who has both isolated herself and been isolated, and in the course of the struggle earned the love of a psychologically fragile cop. What begins as a low-key dispute gradually builds in tension and complexity, and unfolds with the inexorable steps to tragedy that Shakespeare perfected, and few dramatists since have learned.
*[I read it the next month]
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