Where the heart is

Let “House of Sand and Fog” tell you a story. A story of hopes as evanescent as the drifting fog, of dreams as unreliable as a structure carelessly built out of sand.

It’s a despairing narrative about the capacity we have to destroy our own lives just when we think we’re doing the opposite, a story that uses exceptional acting to wrench and twist our emotions. It sends us back to words like tragedy and catharsis, because at its core this film has an inescapable, unflinching fidelity to human truth. It’s a story that haunts long after it’s seen, not just because we’re overpowered by what happens to its characters but because, if we’re honest, we see how all of it, even the worst of it, could happen to us.

A film this consuming doesn’t get made without great passion, one that began with Andre Dubus III’s memorable novel, a bestselling National Book Award finalist about a pair of uncomprehending strangers whose conflicting dreams put them on a terrible collision course over a nondescript Northern California house.

Successful commercial director Vadim Perelman seized on this book as his first theatrical feature with a feral intensity that can be felt everywhere, an obsessive fervor without which this kind of heartfelt but pitiless drama could never have made it to the screen with its implacable virtues intact.

Perelman persuaded Dubus to sell him the rights, co-wrote the screenplay with Shawn Lawrence Otto, and oversaw the impeccable cast, which includes not only Oscar-winning stars Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly in career-milestone roles, but also “Black Hawk Down’s” Ron Eldard, admired Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, beginner Jonathan Ahdout and the veteran Frances Fisher, all of whom give moving performances in crucial supporting roles. The director also understood that to successfully film Dubus’ novel he had to be guided by two conflicting notions. He had to be at home with big emotions and empathize with characters who allowed overwrought feelings to blot out all reason the way an eclipse blacks out the sun. Yet he also had to be willing to recount these people’s stories with iron-willed restraint, to let everything be told with carefully chosen words, looks and gestures. For in a narrative like this, even a hint of forced or overdone acting would be fatal.

Fortunately, especially with Kingsley and Connelly, “Fog” has performers who each in their own way dug deeply into themselves to get to a place where this story became real to them. It’s a tribute to how strong their work is that the force of their personalities does not fade even when they are not on screen -- that’s how much of a disruptive presence these people are in each other’s lives.

For though it never occurs to them, Col. Massoud Amir Behrani, formerly of the Iranian air force, and impoverished housecleaner Kathy Nicolo are more alike than different, a double study in bottled-up resentment, desperation and rage. Driven, self-centered, heedless of others, both make a fetish of their grievances, and both have paid a dire price for the charades their lives have become.

Straight as a knife, impeccably dressed, his face the mask of a bird of prey, the colonel was a wealthy and significant man in the shah’s Iran. We meet him, tan and fit, as the doting parent at his daughter’s lavish wedding. But what, his guests wonder, does he now do for a living? No one seems to know.

A man of enormous pride and extraordinary will, the colonel, it turns out, works on a paving crew repairing highways by day and as a convenience-store clerk by night, making careful notations of even the smallest expense. Burdened by circumstance, hardened by putting up with years of disappointment and disrespect, the colonel has maintained the facade of wealth and position so his daughter can marry well. Now he is desperate to escape his situation, to give his family, and especially the 14-year-old son (the soulful Ahdout) that he fears is too soft for the world, the piece of the American dream he foolishly thought would be easily his.

If the colonel’s deception is toward the world, Kathy’s is toward her family. A recovered substance abuser who likely has always had difficulty coping with her life, Kathy lives in the small house her father left jointly to her and her more successful brother. Though she pretends on the phone to her mother that everything is fine, in fact her husband abandoned her months ago and she has pretty much abandoned her own life as a result, not opening her mail and often not even getting out of bed.

Those habits provoke a crisis when Kathy is abruptly evicted from her house for nonpayment of a business tax. That tax turns out to be a bureaucratic error, which, her legal aid lawyer (an effective Fisher) tells her, could have been corrected in time if Kathy had had the will to open her mail. But now there is no time, the house is put up for auction and, recognizing its value, the colonel buys it.

“Today,” he says to his uncertain wife, “God has kissed our eyes.” One person’s kiss, however, is another’s dagger to the heart. As the brutal conflict between the colonel and Kathy plays out -- she heedlessly determined to reclaim her house, he just as willfully insisting it is legally his -- the gravitational force of this all-consuming dispute inevitably drags other people into it. On the colonel’s side, aside from his son, there is his wife, Nadi, a demure woman fated never to be at home in what will always be a strange new country to her. Actress Aghdashloo, herself an Iranian refugee, manages to persuasively convey the graceful characteristics of an entire vanished culture in addition to quietly holding her own against the powerhouse performances of the film’s stars.

The lost but stunningly beautiful Kathy could bewitch any man, but she has a special appeal for deputy sheriff Lester Burdon (Eldard), who meets her when he enforces her eviction. Unable to resist the flood tides of her emotions or her obvious need for the stability that he considers his strength, Eldard is exactly right as the decent, reasonable person increasingly radicalized by being in the orbit of these formidably rigid adversaries.

It is the particular gift of “House of Sand and Fog” to present us with antagonists who act both badly and well, who are simultaneously right and wrong. Beautifully shot by Roger Deakins with a moody James Horner score, this film is in sympathy with people who feel so justified that they become oblivious to the cost of believing the rectification of their grievances is all that matters. It also despairs of their behavior. Its step-by-step tragedy is so ruthless in its unfolding, you may find yourself wishing it were less well done, that it left you some room to breathe. But “House of Sand and Fog” has a story to tell and it means to tell it, no matter what the cost.

*

‘House of Sand and Fog’

MPAA rating: R, for some violence, disturbing images, language and a scene of sexuality

Times guidelines: Intense adult subject matter, scenes of brief but devastating violence

Jennifer Connelly ... Kathy

Ben Kingsley ... Behrani

Ron Eldard ... Lester

Frances Fisher ... Connie Walsh

Kim Dickens ... Carol

Shohreh Aghdashloo ... Nadi

Jonathan Ahdout ... Esmail

In association with Cobalt Media Group, a Michael London production, released by DreamWorks Pictures. Director Vadim Perelman. Producers London, Perelman. Screenplay Perelman and Shawn Lawrence Otto, based on the book by Andre Dubus III. Cinematographer Roger Deakins. Editor Lisa Zeno Churgin. Costumes Hala Bahmet. Music James Horner. Production design Maia Javan. Art director Drew Boughton. Set decorator Gene Serdena. Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes.

In general release