in the grip of the python
by
Douglas Messerli
Ramin
Bahrani and Amir Naderi (screenplay, based on a story by Ramin Bahrani and
Bahareh Azimi), Ramin Bahrami (director) 99 Homes / 2015
The
dilemmas portrayed in Ramin Bahrani’s 2015 film, 99 Homes, are not
precisely tragic events, although the work begins with a suicide. Rather,
Bahrani’s film slowly uncoils, along with its character’s loves, like a python
seeking to slowly strangle each of them to death. And like the python’s grip,
the more these figures struggle, the more deeply entrapped with the destroyer’s
grip they become.
The “destroyer” here, working in
conjunction with the bans and the US government, is Rick Carver (Michael
Shannon), a seemingly slimy house “flipper,” who forecloses on houses whose
owners have failed to pay on their mortgages. Using two hired cops and a team
of brutes, he evicts families, demanding the tenants leave their home
immediately, with only three moments to grab whatever they can scoop up, before
his men remove all of the family’s beloved possessions into the street. If
things get violent, as they sometimes do, he has an ankle gun, the two “hired”
comps, and a phone on speed-dial to the local police. The more the family
argues, the lest time they have to collect their trinkets and to plan for their
new lives.
Carver, having begun his life as a real
estate agent, has quickly come to see that the real money lies not in helping
people to find their dream house, but in helping himself to the remnants of
what their unaffordable dreams have cost them. And, in that sense, he stands at
the reverse end of the American Drea. Yet Carver, having been able over the
years to justify his dirty doing, has long since ceased even believing that
society is democratic, that if you work hard and do good you will receive your
just award. Set sometime during the huge American economic turndown of the
first decade of this century, the events of this film only prove to Carver that
only those smart enough to grab hold of what others can’t afford, allows for
survival. In his cynical view of the world, it is he who is on the side of the
law, while the others have simply been criminal in their abuse of their lives
and loved ones.
We
quickly are forced to look, however, from the other side of the lens, as we follow
a good, if already broken family, trying to go about their lives. Dennis Nash
(Andrew Garfield) is a skillful construction worker who, working on a new
house, is told to go home because the would-be owners have been unable to
obtain their loan. Times are bad, and new jobs are not to be easily found.
Living with his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and his child, Connor (Noah Lomax)—whose
mother’s absence is never fully explained—Dennis and his family are suddenly
unable to pay their mortgage, and despite their delusion that they may have 30
more days before the house, in which they have lived all of the lives, will be
repossessed, they are forced by Carver’s tactics to immediately move to a
run-down motel, filled by people just like themselves, with no imaginable future.
Their sudden descent from good, middle-class folk to American outsiders, just a
step up from the Oakie’s of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, is so
painful that it is difficult to watch.
Even though this family manages to gather
most of their possessions, Dennis discovers that some of his most important
tools—necessary if he is ever to return to work—have been stolen by one of
Carver’s men, and goes to Carver’s offices to confront him. He is unable to
retrieve his tools, but there again encounters the read estate dealer, who offers
him a day job to help clean up a house whose tenants, in anger, have backed up
the sewage, literally, leaving a ring of shit inside their abandoned home. It
is obviously the most disgusting job one might imagine, yet Dennis is so
desperate that he takes on the task.
Within days, the skillful charmer, clearly
in league with the devil himself, has been able to convince Dennis to join his
workers, stealing air conditioners and pool cleaners from empty houses to
resell them to his clients before they can move in. Dennis does such a good
job, he quickly finds himself doing his own evictions. Although it is clear
that he hates the task, he is being paid such a good amount, and he is so determined
to restore his family home, that he swallows his pride and does Carver’s
bidding.
However, he cannot come to tell his own
family where the money is coming from—even though he is soon able to buy back
their house, with the caveat that he cannot move in for three weeks. While they
are living in the motel, however, a man and his family, whom he has evicted
arrives at the motel and recognizes him. Observing the man’s violent anger,
Dennis’ son and mother suddenly perceive the truth, despite his continued attempts
to cover it up.
Although, in some respects, is inability
to comprehend the sentiment so many families attach to their homes, is some
large context, may make sense, the real problem for Dennis does not really concern
his family domicile—he does in fact buy another home for his loved ones—but
that he has not been able to be honest about his moral abnegation. Taking them
to their “new,” far more luxurious home cannot assuage their own disappointment
in him, and the grandmother and son arrange to live with Lynn’s brother in
Tampa rather than stay with Dennis.
Carver, who now truly believes he controls
the young former carpenter, involved in a grand real estate plot, attempts to
squelch a lawsuit by illegally placing a missing document in the original file.
The family suing is one that Dennis has met early on in the courthouse, and Dennis
delays in handing over the fraudulent file to the corrupt court clerk. At the
last moment, however, the waiting clerk spots him, pulling the envelope from
Dennis’ hand, allowing the judge to maintain that since the document in now in
the file, the family has no case.
As if testing Dennis, Carver demands that
he join him for the actual eviction; arriving at the home, however, it becomes
apparent that the former owner, brandishing a rifle, has hole up inside with
his family, determined to defend his little domain. The police arrive and a
stand-off with assuredly violent consequences seems inevitable.
To save the day, Dennis dares the shooter,
moving directly toward him to explain that indeed the house does legally
belong to the family, since he has placed a fraudulent document into the file.
Up to this point, Bahrani’s film has been
a powerful neo-realist work somewhat in the manner of David Mamet (but without
the stagey dialogue of the playwright), a work perhaps even closer to the
brilliant Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (yet without their
humor and grace). But suddenly 99 Homes switches into a slightly
sentimental and certainly murky tale. Dennis, for speaking the truth, seems to
be awarded the appreciation even of Carver, as he is carted off by police for
the criminal act to which he just confessed. Carver, on the other hand, is
assured by the police that he is off the hook.
Has Dennis simply gone to prison in order
to save Carver’s back? Has Carver suddenly realized the error of his ways?
Surely even the would-be violent acquaintance, despite having been returned the
ownership of his house, will also be spending some time in jail. In short, the
moral ground which Bahrani has attempted to restore is still so shaky that we
can’t be assured that anyone has been saved. We can only imagine that Carver,
with his close governmental relationships, will soon be back to threaten the
unfortunate homeowners who have no recourse.
Los
Angeles, October 6, 2015
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (October 2015).
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