99 Homes is a movie that stays with you. Not for the usual compelling storyline or memorable acting, but for its neo-realistic expression of the way a callous system can challenge one’s mortality, and even more, survival. Directed by Iranian-American Ramin Bahrani (At Any Price, Chop Shop), is that rare movie that succeeds cinematically and philosophically.
The opening sequence unfolds as follows: the bloody legs of a man, dead in a bathroom, are the preface of a tracking shot that creeps into another room where a man is standing. The man answers a business call, seemingly unaffected by the suicide of the man in the next room. Sharply dressed in a Floridan-style beige suit, coupled with a fierce square jaw, his appellation, “boss”, becomes self-explanatory.
This is Rick Carver. Played by the sensational Michael Shannon, Carver is a real-estate broker in a very grim post-GFC Florida with the daily errand of foreclosing homes.
And Carver follows procedure: evict the owners, immediately remove their belongings, and push them to the sidewalk. It seems the man in the bathroom decided shooting himself was a better option than facing eviction.
“America doesn’t bail out losers,” Rick says. “America was built by bailing out winners. You go to church? Only 1 in 100 is gonna get on that ark, son. And every other poor soul’s gonna drown. I’m not gonna drown.”
The next victim becomes the films protagonist. Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield, in a refreshingly diverse role to his Spiderman adventures) is a single father and currently unemployed construction worker, whose tireless years of work become seemingly irrelevant when his home is due to be foreclosed.
This is where his family lives, and this is his childhood home. In a truly confronting eviction scene, is becomes clear this is a world in which survival of the fittest is paramount.
Michael Ordoña of The LA Times comments:
The movie’s scenes of desperate homeowners being evicted are as brutal and visceral as anything in cinemas this year.
However, a glimmer of hope remains. Carver is ostensively impressed by Nash’s persistence to hold on to his home. A soon converted acolyte, Nash’s casual work as a repairman for Carver becomes something much, much more. Making more money than he ever had in his lifetime, but overstepping harsh moral and ethical boundaries, Nash becomes a pawn in the game of survival of the fittest – He metamorphoses to the one knocking on peoples doors, pushing them to the sidewalk.
In 99 Homes, we see a man who loses everything in the battle to keep it.
99 Homes is in cinemas now.
