William Warnky

Warnky's wife here... Saw in at 18 yo at movies. Came home and was still stupefied. Was trying to explain it to my mother, what/why I was so moved, but I couldn't. I only "got" some of it. But it still blew me away Just saw it again at 61 yo on TCM. My God. Brilliance. Depressing, sad, real, true. Art. So many layers. Just brilliant. Watched it twice today. Once alone and again when my husband came home from work. Had to share with him. We sat in silence as the credits rolled. Nuff said.

(Written by the wife of William Warnky, Victoria) Have seen this movie many, many times. Love it. All performances are fully human and first-rate, but Ben Kingsley is amazing. Makes me wish I had been an actor instead of what I am. To do work like he does here? WOW. POWERFUL beyond measure. Cathy's story is about the loss of her marriage, her family home and the history represented in the house her father built. She is clearly depressed and overwhelmed even before the film begins, and simply cannot deal with life. She is fighting her demons while trying to maintain a new and fragile sobriety. Her life so far has left her frail, angry, hurt; full of loss. Mr. Bahrani's story is about the repossession of what he has lost--HIS home in Iran--to a political upheaval. He has come to America to start over and rebuild a life for his family--his duty as husband and father. He does all the right things and works jobs that would have been "beneath him" in Iran, to earn what he now believes should be his; the home that Cathy lost. His life so far has left him hard, angry, hurt; full of loss. Life has been unkind to both of these people. What they clash over are their attempts to grab and hold on to something allusive and illusive--the American Dream--a good life as REPRESENTED by the ownership of a specific home. And their good intentions, their beliefs that they, individually, are right in their grasping, is what destroys a family and shakes Cathy out of her stupor and back into reality. And reality is, sometimes, best left alone. Although from different sides of the world and cultures that could not be more different, their stories are, from a human perspective, identical. Loss of place. Loss of roots. Loss of a sense of self. I love this movie and it hits me hard every time I watch it. I guess ultimately I watch it time and again for Ben Kingsley's performance. All are good, but he draws me in. His face wears humiliation masked by a pride that he is struggling to regain. He MUST be hard or he won't make it and he knows this. And he is "making it" for his family. It is all about family. That's it. It's all about family. And who cannot relate to that? Watch it, but watch out for it. It is, like life and loss, ultimately a gut-punch.