‘Homes’ delves into US real estate collapse
Print Edition
RAMIN Bahrani’s “99 Homes” throbs with the public fury and private horror of the real estate collapse. Set in the Orlando suburbs, Bahrani plunges into the ugly, contentious dramas of foreclosure. It’s a war movie where thresholds are the battle lines.
“This is our home!” cries Andrew Garfield’s Dennis Nash from his doorway when police and a real-estate broker for the bank, Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), collect on his lawn to evict him, his young son (Noah Lomax) and his mother (Laura Dern).
It’s a scene that “99 Homes” plays out repeatedly, sometimes with tears, sometimes with blood, and always with a tragic sense of invasion for the turned-out families spilled onto sidewalks.
The central twist of the film is that once Nash, a jack-of-all-trades carpenter whose work has dried up along with new home construction, finds himself out of options, he’s lured into work by Carver. He’s a Faustian figure: a white-suited devil on a cellphone making a fortune profiting on the misfortunes of others.
But shacked up in a low-rent motel and with his family’s survival very much in question, Nash takes the job. He soon finds himself on the other side of foreclosures, explaining to others that they are now trespassing on the bank’s property. Gobs of money, some of it underhandedly made, help quiet his guilt.
Garfield, in his first post “Spiderman” movie and most adult role to date, excels in capturing Nash’s desperate transition. As he so often is, Shannon is a towering force. His Carver is ruthlessly emotionless, rationalizing his role as merely a cog in a system controlled by larger entities: banks, the government.
He drives down the block, eyeing each house for repossession. His own mansion, he says, he’s had for 18 months but will flip by New Year’s. He’s a ruthless realist operating in a corrupt system: “Don’t get emotional about real estate,” he repeats.
The real villain of “99 Homes” lies somewhere off-screen. It’s the entire, rigged apparatus — predatory lending, unfair mortgage rates, bailed-out banks — that has produced both the unfairly evicted and the likes of Carver. “America doesn’t bail out the losers,” Carver says in his big speech. But his hint of relief in the film’s climactic moment suggests he, too, feels trapped by the dehumanizing system.
Bahrani, who wrote the script with Ami Naderi, has specialized in socially conscious tales. His touch isn’t always light. It’s not every director who will, after stretching out every moment of Nash’s eviction, then cue the arrival of his son’s school bus just when men are emerging with armfuls of their things.
But where many well-meaning social dramas inevitably turn soggy with moralizing, the visceral “99 Homes” keeps its fire.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
