Massoud Amir Behrani, the proud, honest Iranian immigrant played by Ben Kingsley in "House of Sand and Fog," is the sort
of person the American Dream was designed for. As a colonel in pre-Ayatollah Iran, he once had several large trees torn down because they blocked the view of the ocean from his bungalow. Now, he finds America to be particularly suited to his lifestyle, because in America, you're supposed to be able to get whatever you want. That's the American Dream, after all. "House of Sand and Fog," a particularly distinguished debut from first-time director Vadim Perelman, based on Andre Dubus III's Oprah-approved novel, is about the dissolution of the American Dream, the one that calls for little houses with white picket fences and two-parent families and a steady 9-to-5 job. Behrani has been living in a small apartment with his wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and teenage son Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout) while he works two jobs, days on a road crew and nights at a convenience store. Having married off his older daughter, he now spends the remainder of his savings on a house, purchased at a government auction for far below the market value. He can fix it up a bit and resell it for four times what he paid and buy a REALLY nice place. The house in question, however, belonged to Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly), whose husband left her eight months ago (a fact she has not yet revealed to anyone) and who has spent most of her time in bed, depressed, since then. She never bothered with her mail, where she would have found letters from the county, threatening to evict her if she did not pay back taxes on the house. Sure enough, she has now been evicted, and her home immediately sold to Behrani. The county turns out to have been in error -- Kathy never owed any taxes -- but Behrani refuses to sell the house back for anything less than market value. Legally, he is in the right. Ethically, the issue is more complicated.
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