Grand Prize winner of the Deauville American Film Festival in 2015, 99 Homes strikes hard and right, seven years after the premium crisis in the United States. Ramin Bahrani depicts a race for money filled with anger, which intensifies to the point of rupture, and gives us very vain weapons against an all-powerful capitalism. A great political and irascible film, to (re)discover now on Netflix.
United States, Florida. The décor is heavenly, the houses are linked with their perfectly mowed lawn and their bluish pool. And yet behind the facades are dramas that shatter these seemingly perfect family lives. In 2008, the subprime crisis hit the United States hard, and plunged many families into misery: Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield, the hero of the recent Under the Silver Lake), a single father living with his son and mother, finds himself homeless overnight, forced to leave everything on the sidewalk. The one who kicks him out is Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), a real estate agent bottled in capitalism devoid of empathy and comforting words.
Ramin Bahrani plunges his camera into precarious situations, without ever making hasty and deconstructed judgments; Leaning neither to one side nor the other, the scenario always takes the necessary distance to this harsh reality. Instead of taking sides between scavengers and poor families, the director takes a bitter look at the culture of capitalism, the terrible lessons of money and its destructive power. The roles are gradually reversed throughout the film, until the executioners and victims are deconstructed in a heavy rhythm and a tense atmosphere. Measured and controlled anger pours into words and images, a quiet anger that covers an omnipresent grudge and delivers righteous emotions.
Where Ramin Bahrein also manages to touch us, and to make his story more than alive, is in the sequence of situations and their repercussions. While many see their home as a home full of memories, others see value, numbers, walls with cost and benefit. And each of these two visions has repercussions on the actions that follow, on human relationships and on family and professional ties.
A true political force, 99 Homes stands out in the cinematographic landscape by its accuracy and its commitment against a system plagued by the culture of money. A punch well dosed, admirably interpreted, and that we are not about to forget. To (re)discover now on Netflix.
