Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Starring: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri

Directed by: Mira Nair

South Asian directors making films in the West seem to have the expectation of them to tell stories related to their own origins, and Mira Nair has mostly done precisely that, with films like Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel. Coincidence or not, I won’t comment, but her more successful and acclaimed films have been stories of people from the Indian sub-continent. Another novel adaptation, Nair latest film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, takes us to Lahore, Pakistan, a city she has a personal connection with.

Following the kidnapping of an American professor from Lahore University, American journalist Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber) meets with Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), another professor at the same university, who is suspected of being a fundamentalist. Told as a dialogue between these two characters, The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows the story of how Ahmed’s character, a successful financial analyst from Wall Street ended up back in Lahore and possibly involved with a terrorist group. The film’s screenplay (Mohsin Hamid, Ami Boghani and William Wheeler) has added a lot to Hamid’s 2007 novel, which was told as just a monologue, as Changez Khan tells the American his story. Nair and her screenwriters have understood the importance of adapting and adjusting the story to the form they wanted to tell it in, and for once being unfaithful to the source material pays off.

The gradual change in Changez, from the kid with the American Dream coming true to a man who has suffered injustice really comes across as believable, being both well written and acted. Riz Ahmed himself is a British Asian, and his Urdu dialogues aren’t always as delivered perfectly, nor is the accent realistic, but this is not something majority of the audience would even notice, and these are minor faults in an otherwise remarkable performance. I really hope this gets him more recognition with bigger and better directors. Kate Hudson as the American girlfriend Erica (and as a brunette) works better than it should. Her character has also been expanded from what it is in the novel, giving us more of the full and happy life he had, before it slowly disintegrates. Given that the story is being told, what we see of the character if Erica is a little two-dimensional, but Hudson manages to leave her mark all the same. Its possible she may not be remembered just for rom-coms after all. Indian actors Om Puri and Shabana Azmi make a nice addition to the cast as his parents.

I quite liked the use of Pakistani songs throughout, and the music itself has the required effect, but if they don’t subtitle them, non-Urdu speakers will miss out on some wonderful and often very relevant lyrics. (The screening at the London Film Festival I attended had some subtitling issues, so I can’t say for certain they have or haven’t done this). There’s also a beautiful eulogy at the end, written by Javed Akhtar, that, rather poetically, sums up the film.

I’m not a fan of Mohsin Hamid’s novel, mainly for the way its told, but I was curious to see how a different storyteller would handle the same story. Mira Nair’s adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist goes to show that handing your work over to someone else is sometimes the best thing to do. The film version allowed me to appreciate the story more than when I read it, which I think is a real accomplishment. Whether you’re a fan of the book or not, the film is worth watching.

I give it ★★★★.

The Reluctant Fudamentalist releases in the US on Friday 26th April, and in the UK on 10th May.

3 Quick Reviews from the Festival

So I’m falling a little behind on my LFF reviewing… Cos I’m a little lazy. And also it takes time, which I haven’t been giving myself to write them. So here are three short and snappy reviews of the last three films I’ve seen at the London Film Festival.

–LITTLE WHITE LIES: Guillaume Canet’s (Tell No One) film about a group of friends, and the little white lies they tell each other. It starts off with one of the group having an accident, and the rest of them decided whether or not to go on their annual vacation. It takes a moment to figure out the relationship between all of them, but maybe that’s because I just assumed they were all friends. Which, as it turns out they were. Its not clear how they became friends either, because some of them are older, some are girlfriends who don’t seem so attached to the group but know everyone well. Its a bit like a psychotic family, but rather a psychotic group of friends. And I love psychotic family stuff. So it was pretty good. And it had Marion Cotillard in it. It was mainly a comedy, or I found a lot of it funny, but it gets quite intense towards the end, which you could see coming. Its good to watch if you don’t mind subtitles. Or, you know French. Its a little long for its genre, at 154 minutes, but it doesn’t get boring.

 

–MIRAL: Based on an autobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal, a Palestinian journalist who grew up in an orphanage in Jerusalem, its directed by Julien Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) plays the title character, and she’s alright, but she honestly is not that great of an actor. She does look a bit like Rula Jebreal though, which is convenient. Also, not to be superficial but she’s a bit too dark skinned to play a Palestinian, I thought. (I’m South Asian as well, I’m not being racist by calling her dark.) Hiam Abbas, who plays Hind al-Husseini – the woman who began the orphanage after the partition of Palestine in ‘48 – was brilliant, as was Alexander Siddig, who plays Miral’s father. Those two really made the film much more watchable. For a autobiographical story, it does not feel like you’re watching a story through one main character; there is a lot of focus on the other women who are significant parts to the story, and it wouldn’t make sense without it. However, the film lacks that sense of it being personal. The score was good, but I felt like I had heard almost all of it before. I definitely noticed some recycled A. R. Rahman pieces. 

–WEST IS WEST: As sequels go, this feels quite unnecessary, before and after you’ve seen the film. But, whether or not people really care 11 years later, its pretty good. It has its fair share of flaws, but it has a lot of the same humour and heart as the original did, which people may still find enjoyable. Set roughly 5 years on, all the main cast are the same, with the exception of the boy who plays George/Jahangir Khan’s (Om Puri) youngest son, Sajid. Aqib Khan is pretty decent, better in his comedy then in the dramatic moments, which there were a lot more of then I remember there being in part one. We are introduced to the original Mrs. Khan (Ila Arun) in Pakistan, who has struggled but got on with her life without her husband for 30 years, who suddenly shows up with his troubled son from his other wife. Om Puri’s English was terrible, and though it was intentional, he had been in England for 30 years, living with an English wife, and all his children speak English. Surely it would have improved. It sounded too deliberate, and became quite distracting in serious scenes. The movie is predictable, and yet very sweet. Like I said, if you like East, you’ll like West.