99 Homes review: Garfield is superb in this film…
99 Homes review
Fresh off the festival merry-go-round from Sundance to Sydney, Ramin Bahrani’s cyclical tale of abject desperation and affronting indifference during the Floridian Housing crisis is a powerfully direct and intense drama that will have you riveted from its opening sequence.
A metaphoric and literal tale of the one percenter’s feeding frenzy on the remaining 99 percent, 99 Homes points straight out of the gate that US fortuity in 2010 has gone down the crapper and with, the livelihoods and homes of middle class America. Slouched in the corner on his bathroom toilet; a gunshot wound and blood splattered walls the only remnants of (what once was) life, this solitary figurehead of the dispossessed establishes the tone and panic of homeowners in the ensuing story and the apathetic cruelty of repo men like Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) who strike the blows and take ownership on behalf of the banks.
Granting the remaining residents only one hour to collect their belongings and clear out before their possessions are dumped outside on the kerb, Carver makes light of the man’s demise whilst instructing his crew to start cleaning by surmising that the deceased killed himself because he ordered pizza when the wife wanted Chinese. It’s a discomforting feeling that lingers throughout the film.
99 Homes review
Along an eerily similar vein, construction worker and young father Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) soon finds himself also fallen and face-to-face with the grim reaper of real estate. Denied by the Court and the bank for more time, Carver boldly offers the same one-hour head start before their belongings are tossed onto the pavement like trash. With nowhere else to go, Nash, his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and son Connor (Noah Lomax) find themselves in the home-tel ghettos off Highway 142; a road that ironically leads to the second happiest place on earth, Disney World.
Desperately seeking work so that he can repay his debts and possibly reclaim his childhood home, Nash is given an opportunity by Carver to work for him for a day, shovelling shit from a backed-up toilet. The move proves worthwhile and before long, Nash finds himself as the pseudo right hand man and reaper in training to creepy Carver.
The intensity of the emotional storyline is tempered by Antony Partos and Matteo Zingales’ pulsating musical score that beats in simpatico with the tension. Bahrani, on hearing the original score, lobbied and managed to convince the US distributor to cover it and I can understand why – it’s outstanding. Likewise, DoP Bobby Bukowski’s observational framing complemented Bahrani’s desperate –v- deviant story line: loose, hand-held styling during intimate family spaces and wide-framed steadycam shots at Carver’s home and empty mansion.
Garfield is superb in the film, delivering a performance that is heartbreaking raw – his eviction of an elderly man (based on a real eviction witnessed by the director) is morally horrific but unquestionably on point. Shannon is equally as compelling as the tanned and toneless repo shark. He is as detached from his moral fibre as he is from the real estate he’s unemotional about. ‘They all got a sob story’ he says, ‘but the law is the law’.
Despite the law’s flaw in protecting struggling homeowners from unscrupulous practices and Nash’s metamorphosis into everything he abhors, 99 Homes is essentially a tale with no true happy ending. For anyone.
99 Homes opens in UK and US cinemas from Friday 25th September 2015..
