The following is a commentary I wrote several years ago, but its relevance regarding the wounded feminine remains........Having viewed House
of Sand and Fog, I don’t know if I am more disturbed by the movie or by the
critics’ lack of recognition of what it might be construed to portray
psychologically. Hence I think that an important view of this movie is lost. It
is hard to disagree with the critics when they point out the film’s many
technical flaws; yet, it also hard to not recall the mesmerizing grip the film
placed on me and the vividness with which I recall it afterwards. On the surface, the movie is about
ownership of a house—the
American dream of the immigrant gone awry. Underneath the tug of war regarding
home ownership between an Iranian immigrant, a colonel in the fallen Shah’s Air
Force, and a ne’er-do-well recovering addict who inherited the house when her
father died but who has neglected to attend to tax collection notices (albeit,
erroneously billed, she lacks the responsibility to open her mail to right the
matter).
This film perceived in other terms might be instead a tragic
story of what happens in a faltering patriarchy that does not heed the wounded
feminine.[1]
Early in the film we see the young woman Kathy in bed waking
up to her mother’s phone call. She responds to her mother’s inquiry about her
husband with denial. She avoids the truth and tells her mother he is away on
business—again. In fact,
he has left her. She, we discover, inherited her father’s house, a find of a
beachfront property that is deteriorating in disarray under her “care”. It
would seem that she needs to learn how to psychically leave her father’s house
and move into her own adulthood. Takeout leftovers, strewn about among other
garbage, and unopened mail cluttering the floor by her door indicate that she
is still in a hole of despair even if she is not actively abusing drugs or
alcohol. She is surrounded by the beauty of nature yet in being so disconnected
from it she gains no access to its nurture for her soul.
Note that her own attractiveness seems to enamor some male
film critics to the point where they can’t seem to judge her actions
impartially. In their critiques, they appear to collude with her. The fact that
male critics downplay her responsibility in the tragedy that unfolds seems to
me to be “reverse patriarchy” bias. As a woman, I do not find her an endearing
character; the Iranian mother Nadi shows her more compassion than I can muster.
Kathy has solid choices to make all along the way that would help her out of
her hole, but time and again she digs deeper.
When I say this, however, I question how I can confer blame
on her for the patriarchy in which she is trapped (my own complex activated,
perhaps). Who knows what her family and father issues were before he died? And
“patriarchy” is not about men per se.
The patriarchal way of life wounds both men and women when it juxtaposes male
dominance and authority over women, when it seeks power through might rather
than collaboration, when it condones violence and eschews compassion.
The women in this movie—save
the legal defense attorney—all
seem caught in a patriarchal complex. Kathy, the dry drunk, cannot
metaphorically leave her father’s house and grow into her own identity as an
adult; and so she is literally evicted. Had she done the psychological work of
leaving her father’s house, the tragic circumstances would not have unfolded as
they did.
Nadi, the Iranian mother, is subject to the benevolence of
her despotic husband. He is caught in his own rigid character structure of how
a man “should” be—particularly
a man of stature and authority in his home country. It is easy to empathize
with his character that seems proud yet having integrity. (I remember my father
always keeping his honor and pride intact by wearing his suit jacket and bow
tie even when his job didn’t call for that—it
was his way of standing tall—and
he was short—in the face
of an American culture that might still
consider him an Italian immigrant even though he was born here.)
The colonel is a victim of the patriarchy too—he is so engulfed in his role
as male provider that he, like Kathy, is in denial of his truth. His truth is
that he works many menial jobs to support his family, that his Italian suits
and his Mercedes are mere phantoms of a memory of more. The Behranis live
excessively beyond their means so that his daughter can be “successfully”
married and they can retain their social status and their son can look forward
to going to a fine college. However, whatever small fortune they took with them
when they left Iran
is dwindling.
And Nadi, his wife, has power and grace, but she is subsumed
under his benevolent dictatorship. Theirs is a loving relationship but it is
not an equal partnership. In his patriarchal world, the colonel is sometimes
seen to resort to physical violence (infrequent violence accompanied with
apologies afterwards remains violence). We see early in the film in flashbacks
to Iran
that the colonel has toppled large luscious pine trees in order to survey the
ocean view “to infinity”. As he orders this, we see his wife on the beach
running with the children. The seeds of destruction are already sown. (At first
I thought her running was in distress for what he had done with the trees but
reviewing the scene, she is instead colluding with his action—women are not innocent in
patriarchy either. The patriarchy, to expand the metaphor, is the energy behind
destruction of, e.g., rain forests—brute
force to overcome “obstacles” and whatever is “in the way” of “progress”,
power, money.) Nadi is caught in a gilded cage and doesn’t question his
authority which provides a comfortable life for her and her son. (In his succeeding
to marry his daughter off to a wealthy Irani family, there became another
gilded cage in the making.) Nadi pushes and pressures her colonel, playing into
the patriarchy.
The deputy sheriff Burdon who attempts to “rescue” Kathy,
another patriarchal gesture of “I know better even when I do things illicitly”,
seems to be the most unconscious complex driven figure of them all. Unhappy in
his marriage, he “befriends” Kathy after he serves her the eviction notice. He
drinks wine in her presence and she, of course, doesn’t resist the temptation.
These are two people driven by their own dark psychological complexities and
neediness and they feed each other with their dysfunction. Burdon, like Colonel
Behrani, uses brute force against his wife when she confronts him about his
affair with Kathy.
Patriarchal power is in charge; and what the archetypal
feminine symbolizes, compassion and connection, is demeaned. Both women and men
need this feminine aspect to soften patriarchy’s harshness.
Esmail, the son of the Behranis, would seem to be the hope
for the integration of the masculine and feminine—who
might carry the loving compassion and connection that tempers patriarchy’s
rigidity and relentless need for control.
Instead, it becomes Kathy’s choice. Unable to psychically leave
her father’s house, she perhaps is finally awakening to the world she must
create for herself, post eviction and in the aftermath of tragedy, and with no
illusions about either being sacrificed/victimized to the government’s blind-to-human-plight
bureaucratic patriarchy or “rescued” by the blundering power of the father authority
figure of deputy sheriff Burdon. Would that she could have learned sooner that
leaving her father’s house was what she had to accomplish all along. There may
have been less suffering. House of Sand
and Fog drives home (pardon the pun) how inter-connected we are in our
psychic woundedness. The more we heal ourselves, the more we heal the world.
[1] Blood in
this film might be considered to be a symbol of the feminine—blood is messy, blood is the
mysterious menses, the sacred mysteries of women; and blood might also be a
symbol of sacrifice.
But blood is assiduously avoided in the Behrani family—the feminine is feared.
Early on, we see the colonel admonishing his son as he
arrives home from athletic practice with a wounded leg—“do not get blood on the floor”—we then see the bloody leg and
immediately the scene shifts to the moon, the feminine menses symbol. One may
ponder if the colonel’s concern with bloody messes has a history—did blood shedding occur at
his hand under the patriarchal power of the Shah? Later, Nadi and Esmail wrap
Kathy’s bloody foot in a plastic bag before she crosses the threshold into
their/her house and they tend to her injury.
No comments:
Post a Comment