Format: DVD from personal collection on various players.
I’m going to go far afield to introduce the idea of House of Sand and Fog because there’s something incredibly important about this movie that needs to be addressed. As will likely surprise no one, I am a huge gaming nerd; it’s possible that I’m a bigger tabletop RPG nerd than I am a movie nerd. One day several years ago during a gaming session, my friend Doug said something that stuck with me that is surprisingly relevant to House of Sand and Fog. For Doug, contemplating a good vs. evil battle wasn’t that interesting. For him, in D&D terms, the most terrifying conflict he could imagine was between two good societies, and specifically between two lawful good societies. Why? Because each of them would have clear reasons to believe themselves to be in the right and to have the moral high ground. Because of this, each would be more likely to fight to the bitter end for those moral principles.
How is that relevant to a film about a house in California? Because it’s kind of the situation we find ourselves in. There are two sides in the conflict we see, and both sides are clearly in the right. So often in a film we’re given good guys and bad guys. Even when the bad guys make sense (see Black Panther from a week ago), they’re still almost always clearly bad guys. That’s not the case with House of Sand and Fog. The two sides in conflict in this film are both very clearly in the right, and we are in a position where at best only one will give what they want or deserve.
