The House of Sand (2006)

That was an excellent one.

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

How sad is this?

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Epic is often something we attribute to lengthy films or ones that have a cast of nearly a hundred or more. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) quickly comes to mind. It had an all-star cast and a run time of over 220 minutes. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) is another, clocking in at just over 190 minutes. Then there's the more modern "epics" such as GLADIATOR (2000) that comes in at 171 minutes.But run times are only a portion of what makes an epic an epic. THE HOUSE OF SAND runs well under two hours (115 minutes), but spans multiple generations, covering over 60 years. And although The House of Sand teeters on the verge epic-ness, it misses the mark ...but only by a hair.Visually breathtaking, The House of Sand focuses on the lives of three generations of women. The first generation is forced into a little known desert area of Brazil where a man named Vasco (Ruy Guerra) leads a ragtag group of settlers on a quest for land to call their own. With him comes his wife Aurea (Fernanda Torres), a young woman of an arranged marriage. Also with him is Aurea's mother, Maria (Fernanda Montenegro). The group of settlers quickly learn the inhospitable nature of the area and all of them flee, except for Vasco, Aurea, and Maria. But Vasco soon dies in an accident, leaving the mother/daughter team to fend for themselves. Luckily, there's a group of former slaves eking out an existence nearby. Massu (Seu Jorge) is one of these tough ex-slaves, and he takes a liking to Aurea (as do several other men who live or happen upon this sandy area).As time passes, Maria falls in love with the dunes and the simplicity of the area. But Aurea begs to leave. She wants for the excitement of a city with people her own age. Several options for freeing herself from the boredom of the sand appear and just as quickly evaporate, stranding her year after year in the desolation. One time, however, a young officer in the Brazilian Army visits the area with scientists who are marking an eclipse of the sun, and a quick one-night-stand results in a pregnancy. The officer leaves and Aurea is once again stuck in this place. Her daughter (Maria) grows and looks exactly like Aurea. And as Aurea ages, she has a striking resemblance to her mother, Maria. Roles get reversed after Aurea's mother's death in a sand slide. Aurea must now be the responsible mother to her daughter Maria. But Maria's life in this place is adding up to zero. Sound familiar? The circular pattern of family has been done before, but never on par with this. The sweeping vistas, quiet yet constantly shifting sands, and the pressing of dunes on everything (including the women's relationships) make this film a very good story. But not a great one.The short run time forces two quick decade leaps that are, to say the least, jarring and confusing. Also, the excellent cinematography lingered just a bit too long on occasion whenever sweeping scenery presented itself ("Yeah, that's beautiful ...still beautiful ...yep, still great ...is it still on the screen?") This is one of director Andrucha Waddington's first feature length films and one can't help but be impressed by his able hands on the helm. It is a magnificent piece of cinema that needed just a few touch-ups in order to be "Epic."

To say this movie is inert is much too great an understatement. It makes the dictionary look like an explosive dramatic novel. Critics would have you believe that great cinematography and scenery can substitute substance. Such a belief is akin to touting grass growing as breakthrough cinema just because it's being broadcasted in HD.The movie establishes from the beginning that the true star is the scenery. There are but a dozen words in the first 20 minutes of the film, a trend that continues throughout and grows weary if you can manage to stay up. The sound of the wind and crashing waves are terrific for putting you to sleep. But they hardly constitute a gripping drama.For reasons that are never explained, a very stubborn man takes his wife and her mother to what amount to a sand dune. What follows is a very long depiction of the most uninteresting lives in the entire continent of South America. If the premise is not absurd enough, we get treated to three generations of insignificant characters and a whole lot of desert nature. A desert that's much too kind in my opinion. A real desert would've killed the first generation in this boring movie and spared me 90 minutes of garbage.

From Brazil begins this unusual tale taking place in their early 20th century's untamed deserts, leading a distraught man, his wife, with family and following, to the absurd notion of settling into the middle of an elusive waterhole, centered in the middle of an endless sandscape, into one eventual House of Sand. What transpires from the mysterious setup of this piece is captured with quite dignity, accentuated with the production values that would have any techie humbled by the tough shoot this crew must have undergone to balance the artsy direction to the harsh environment. It is to the film's detriment then, that the vast majority of time is spent milking the unique aesthetics involved here, insensitively editing many of the beautifully photographed shots which adds up to a whole that unwittingly imitates it's protagonist's plight a little too closely- that of sinking into the ground of nothingness. Fortunately a cleverly conceived, though questionably rendered plot device snaps the viewer's interest back late in the game, even rounding out the mostly one trick affair on a profound note. This extra dimension carved out in the third act does save this House from blowing away for the artistic excuse a lot of it seems to be.

I loved this movie because it is fully of truthful contrasts. The larger story portrays the passing of time and immense global changes through war, scientific and technological advances. Everything changes, yet stays the same. Regardless of the generation, youth longs for excitement and change, while time brings calmness and acceptance of circumstance. The most amazing part is all is that the passing of time is portrayed from within an oasis in the middle of sand dunes where the sands of time pass slowly yet surely. This contrast, and the circumstances that bring the characters there, leave the audience wondering witch they would choose, the simple, calm, and relaxed life of the sand, or the stressful, competitive, yet object filled life in the city.It's important to stay sharp to catch the change in generations because the actresses remain the same throughout, but this only adds to the story's message once you figure it out. I gave it a 10