This film probably inspired the most mixed reactions in me than any has for a very long time. The film features contrived situations, terrible misunderstandings and sheer stupidity! Basically the plot involves Jennifer Connelly's character of Kathy having her house repossessed and Ben Kinglsey and Shohreh Aghdashloo as an Iranian couple who buy it, leading to conflicts between Connelly and her policeman boyfriend and Kinglsey who wishes (but really needs) to sell it on for a profit.
This seems a simple conflict situation, yet the thing that upset me about it was the way the film was weighted so much against Connelly's character. It made Connelly's character so unsympathetic that the audience is almost forced to like the Iranian couple, and I have a suspicion that this was done because it might have been felt that there needed to be something extra to get an audience to root for the Iranians?
There is a slight attempt to make the Iranian couple a little unsympathetic in order to redress the balance, but it does feel a little too there to seemingly create a tension in the audience between which group of people they should root for. Let's weigh up the problems caused by the two groups:
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly's character):
-Loses her house because she doesn't check her mail (this is probably the only vaguely understandable thing that happens to her that caught my sympathy)
-Has been left by her boyfriend because he doesn't want children and she does (This is often a big problem for me as it treats children as objects used by the couple in an attempt to keep them together, rather than for the reasons of loving each other and wanting to make a baby. It makes the boyfriend seem bad for not giving her the child she wants - this is the same thing that irritates me about Godard's Une Femme Est Une Femme. Anna Karina is beautiful, but I wouldn't trust her character to look after someone elses baby let alone her own, and the more she pouts and acts like a child, the less sympathy I have with her
!)-Falls for the policeman, who is already married and decides to leave his wife and child for her
-Visits the house to confront the Iranian couple numerous times, despite being warned against visiting by her lawyer
-Gets upset that they are "more at home there than I ever was"
-Gets policeman boyfriend to visit the house and threaten the couple
-Then, at her lowest ebb, goes to the house and tries to commit suicide in the driveway
-Then, when she is taken in by the couple, tries to commit suicide in the bathroom!
-By returning to the house to commit suicide brings her policeman boyfriend there who sets off the tragic finale
Behrani (Ben Kingsley's character):
-Is in financial difficulties trying to keep up a lavish lifestyle on poorly paid manual jobs.
-Is the 'man of the family' in the sense that he leaves his wife out of the important decisions
-Employs builders to make changes to the house (which hurts Kathy after she puts her bare foot on sticking up nails while shouting at the builders to stop work)
-Slaps his wife in a fit of anger after the policeman who has been threatening them leaves (This is the point that I think was added to make the audience think 'hey, they are both as bad as each other'. Yet there are apologies said after these scenes. The thing that annoys me most about this scene though is not the scene itself but the way it was used in the marketing of the film at the time to suggest that one of the issues dealt with was wife beating - that completely misrepresents what occurs in the film)
-Wishes to sell the house at a profit rather than give it back
This is a complete imbalance rather than a kind of argument of different positions. It feels as if the filmmaker doesn't have enough confidence in his audience to feel the right way about the situation that he has to give the extra nudge to point out what he expects us to feel.
I also found it to be a bad sign when I felt I understood the motivations, and felt much more sympathy for the plight of, Connelly's drug-user character in Requiem For A Dream than I did for the character in this film!
However, as much as Connelly's character is unsympathetic, the policeman boyfriend is even more one-dimensional! It is he who pushes the film into its final tragic spiral as Behrani's son dies in a mix up when he pulls the policeman's gun on him and calls for help - another horrible contrivance as no sooner had the boy done that and the thought 'Iranian holding gun and acting jumpy' had gone though my mind then the obvious happened!
However something strange happened in the final harrowing fifteen minutes of the film. It doesn't excuse the imbalance and contrivance that went before, but I started realising that it was moving into tragic opera territory. The final harrowing minutes following the death of the son and my realisation of the operatic qualities very nearly redeemed the film. The double suicide that follows is crushingly inevitable and deeply moving, especially due to it involving the deaths of the more sympathetic characters.
Even the final contrivance of Kathy returning to the house (for god's sake, why!) makes perfect sense in the context of an opera, and it also had the feel of those Shakespearean endings where there needs to be a witness to the tragedy to make it resonate more deeply, and also that those who caused the situation are faced with the consquences their actions caused. I found this to be beautifully done, if incredibly bleak.
So I was both incredibly irritated and moved by this film. Ben Kingsley gives an amazing performance, especially in the moment where he prays to God in the waiting room for Him to save his son's life. I'd also say that Jennifer Connelly's peformance was good, in an extremely annoying part, as I think a lesser actress wouldn't have kept me involved to the end - I'd have just switched off without caring about what happened to her. The perfect finale however doesn't stop me from feeling this is the least of Connelly's 'pier trilogy' (Dark City, Requiem For A Dream and this one)
I'd be very interested to hear whether the sense of operatic tragedy I felt from the film was also felt by others.
