The Reluctant Fundamentalist Review

Sometimes this is the problem with TIFF: you navigate so many movies in so little time that you don't have the luxury of getting "in the right mood" for each film. I saw The Reluctant Fundamentalist after English Vinglish and before Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2. And its subtlety was maybe too much for me. I came out of it disappointed that it lacked the punch I was expecting. Perhaps it really did lack teeth (and reading excerpts from the book now, I am tempted to say that it did), or perhaps I failed to dial in on the right frequency. Or maybe I was too distracted by my blinding crush on Riz Ahmed (seriously! those EYES!!) to take note of other aspects of the film. Anything's possible.

Gawd!!! Ahem... I rest my case!

This is the story of a Pakistani/Punjabi young man, Changez, who goes to the US to study and work. After graduation he gets hired into a valuation firm where he quickly rises up the ranks through his gift for thinking outside the box and through his ruthless approach to optimizing profit for companies, oftentimes at the expense of their workers. He's a confident, even cocky young man who wants... everything. Then of course 9/11 hits. And between episodes of racial profiling and pressure from his family (and from other people he meets) to choose a side, he ends up moving back to Pakistan where he becomes a teacher at the University of Lahore. But his life is far from peaceful even here as he continues to be under suspicion of terrorist ties, so when an American professor gets kidnapped in Lahore, his allegiances have to be tested once again.

I won't spend too much time on the present-day part of the story because as gorgeous as the opening scene is - the music from a qawwali concert attended by the Khan family (Om Puri and Shabana Azmi play Changez's parents) playing over images of the American professor getting roughed up and taken away in a van - it's a pretty bland ride from here. The dialogues between Changez Khan and his interviewer Bobby (Liev Schreiber) sound like every other Hollywood movie script, so while the action keeps you engaged, there's not much to be learned from this.

The real story is told in flashbacks by a bearded Changez and it takes us through his love affair with New York and the American Dream, and then through his disenchantment with the land of the free in the paranoid post-9/11 world. The first part of the story is extremely well told: in several short but highly effective scenes we learn about the growing distance between Changez and the culture of his parents, we get to know him as a caustic, sometimes arrogant but always charming young man, we see him winning over his colleagues and superiors, and we root for his budding romance with Erica (a brunette Kate Hudson who should henceforth forget that any colour other than blonde even exists).

And through all this, while we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, we're perfectly in sync with this complex character. We laugh at Changez's self-deprecating dry humour even though we know it will turn sour later on. We rejoice with him when he gets promoted even though we know he'll only fall harder. We cheer for him when he tells Erica "All these pictures of me? Come on, you must have a little crush on me." even though we know that relationship can't end well. But then 9/11 happens. And this strong character starts closing up and we lose that connection we thought we had with him.

This was, for me, the biggest flaw of the film. There's an episode where Changez talks about how he felt as he was watching the planes hit the towers on 9/11 and he says (quoting from memory) "Before I got to think about the loss of human lives and about what this meant, for a few brief moments I was in awe... at the audacity of this act. At the brilliance of it." It's a shocking statement, and it holds a promise of a film that will pull no punches. But unfortunately, this is the only moment of its kind. The rest of his inner struggle seems to happen behind closed doors and we never get more insight into his changes of heart. Yes, we witness him being a victim of racial profiling, yes, we see him question his line of work in front of a situation that is too close to home for comfort and yes, we see how his skin colour becomes visible to those close to him, but I for one was in the dark about how this strong, determined, ambitious man ended up doing a complete u-turn. Maybe I wouldn't need an explanation if I was an NRI myself, and maybe this movie is made for NRIs, but as someone who wasn't even on the continent when 9/11 happened, I couldn't relate to him without some guidance and there was none.

But that said, maybe it was just me. Maybe others will watch and totally get it.

And I do highly recommend watching it, if not for Riz Ahmed (in case you missed all my gushing so far, he's fabulous!), then for Mira Nair's flawless direction (what else is new?) and for the excellent music. Given that this soundtrack has been impossible to find, I wasn't even aware that I would be treated to two Atif Aslam songs, so imagine my giddiness when all of a sudden I recognized his voice. Not only that, but one of the songs is a collaboration with Peter Gabriel, who wrote the music for the Urdu poem sung by Atif. I wish I could find even a snippet of it on youtube, I know it would sell the movie single-handedly.

Speaking of Pakistani artists, another little moment of unexpected joy was provided by Mira's nod to a film I absolutely loved last year: Shoaib Mansoor's Bol. In one of the scenes setting up the stage in Lahore, a couple (can't remember if it was Shabana and Om or just a random couple) comes out from a screening of Bol and comments on the virtues of the film. You can't imagine how that made my day!

Last but not least, for a film about racial tensions post 9/11, The Reluctant Fundamentalist also packs a surprising amount of humour, and some of the extra-dry one-liners had the entire audience (and this screened to a full house at TIFF) in stitches. A special mention here to Nelsan Ellis who gets some of the most hilarious wisecracks as an American of (I assume) Jamaican origins. 

So with that in mind, I take your leave now to go and hunt down the book which I am hoping will give me more of those one-liners along with a better insight into the fascinating Changez Khan. I may need to keep a picture of Riz Ahmed open while reading it though...

Bollywood Hollywood and Beyond

Whew... A bit of a delay with this post, and probably not much relevant anymore but since I wrote half of it, well maybe it will still hold some meaning for posterity: some of my thoughts about the "Bollywood, Hollywood and Beyond" panel that kick-started IIFA week in Toronto recently. The guests were (in alphabetical order): Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Kabir Bedi, Lisa Ray, Ajay Virmani.

The panel was paired up with the Cinema Showcards Exhibition displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum through October, an exhibition that made me gasp in awe more than once (Whoa! They glued the photograph of the actress on the poster and then painted accents over it?? This is amazing!).

But back to the panel. The five speakers talked about their individual experiences with Bollywood and how movies are made there while trying to compare it to the best of their knowledge with other film industries. Kabir Bedi seemed the most knnowledgeable about Hollywood, while of course Javed and Shabana talked mostly about Bollywood. I'd put both Lisa Ray and Ajay Virmani in the "beyond" category as their experience lies mostly in Canadian films (even if filmed in India).

A lot of the talk as expected was about how Bollywood is changing and has been changing lately, be it in controversial areas such as copyright issues, or script writing (Kabir Bedi expressed his longing for writers like Javed Akhtar from the good old days), or simply in topics chosen for film making these days. Javed Akhtar was of course a gentleman and never once mentioned his two brilliant offsprings, Zoya and Farhan Akhtar, who are undoubtedly making their script-writing father proud, but sometimes I wanted to jump up and mention them, because while it's true that there are many inane scripts today in Bollywood, it's also true that there are some really good writers out there as well. So I will politely disagree with Kabir Bedi's lamentation that "they don't make them like they used to".

Also on the topic of the changes in Bollywood, Shabana made a fair point about seeing more and more working women in movies nowadays and congratulated Band Baaja Baaraat for their take on this underrepresented reality in today's Indian society. Independent career women have indeed been one of the most interesting developments in Indian films lately. She also spoke beautifully later on about female characters becoming more self-asserted and ideologies like "Main Chup Rahungi" (I will remain quiet) being left far behind. Coming from someone who has always been praised and idolized for her unconventional powerful women roles, this is indeed a great compliment to today's Bollywood.

Javed Akhtar in turn, being the joker that he usually is, counter-argued that the hero never does anything in Bollywood movies either. He had the audience laughing, of course, but I think the point made its way through regardless.

But the most beautiful thing that Shabana said in regards to parallel cinema and Bollywood was that parallel cinema is not gone, but rather it manifests itself in mainstream Bollywood which is something she had always felt was the right way to go about it. I personally salute this statement because it's a very well expressed reflection of my own thoughts on the Bollywood of the new Millenium.

Kabir Bedi then tried to bring the two main topics together and he spoke at length about the philosophy of film making in Bollywood versus Hollywood. Hollywood, in his opinion, does movies as a business or to win Oscars (which is also ultimately about money), so the bottom line is very important and this he tied into the pre-production work that gets done. Bollywood on the other hand is more casual: pre production goes at the same time as production. Indian producers, he said, are the most courageous in the world, because they put their money into something that is often not clearly defined and certainly not guaranteed to succeed.

Kabir Bedi also made an interesting point about Indians not being great planners, but in turn being fantastic improvisers. Knowing a thing or two about event planning myself, I couldn't help but snort at this comment that was meant to praise the creativity of Indian film crews because in my humble opinion there is hardly ever need for improvisation if things are planned right. Moreover, creative patch-work solutions are wonderful to get one out of a sticky unexpected situation, but they should not be the norm, they should stay the exception. So while I applaud along with Kabir Bedi the resourcefulness of a crew who can make an elephant materialize on the sets with only a day's notice, I continue to have more respect for the crew who, knowing months in advance from the script that an elephant will be needed, does all the work ahead of time to make sure the special guest will be looked after and delivered on time.

Of course, these are all generalizations, and surely not all film makers in India do everything last minute, nor are Hollywood film crews always prepared for everything, but when Kabir Bedi said "we are not planners but we are great improvisers" something in that rang very true and not in a good way.

I've decided to gloss over the part of Bedi's speech regarding film making in Europe because he didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about when his whole argument was based on the statement that "Europe is divided by language". That may be so (though not sure exactly how that is different from India as a whole), but Europe also has a highly productive dubbing industry, which, paired up with NOT being allergic to subtitles ensures that people can watch movies from any part of the continent without being in any way held back by the fact that the movie was shot in a language they don't understand. At any rate, the point he was making his way towards when he brought Europe into the discussion was that Indian film makers should pay more attention to that market rather than focusing on North America, which is definitely something I am in favour of.

Last but not least, Ajay Virmani shared with the audience the trailer for Breakaway, a film that his son wrote and stars in. He has confidence that this is the type of film that both Canadian and Indian audiences can connect with. I suppose we'll see about that, but it certainly didn't seem too bad. The film is about a first generation Indo-Canadian trying to make it into the professional hockey world, a sport whiter even than tennis. Some of the lines fell flat for most of the audience, but a couple of them had everyone laughing, notably a point that one of the players on the team makes about the opposite team: "They're bigger, they're faster, they're stronger. And they're WHITE!" If you're expecting this movie to be politically correct, think again! But I for one am perfectly fine with that as long as it's funny.

By the way, Russell Peters and Anupam Kher are in it. And apparently so is Akshaye Kumar, hopefully not for long. Sadly the trailer is nowhere to be found on youtube yet, so here's hoping it will surface soon!

Last but not least, I was not impressed with Lisa Ray beyond her breathtaking good looks, as she was talking about belonging to neither Hollywood (guessing she meant Hollywood North by that because to my knowledge she hasn't actually acted in Hollywood) nor Bollywood. Probably why she couldn't make any good points about either of them, but that's ok because she did leave me with a great quote that I will probably use a lot going forward: "For every statement you can make about Bollywood, the opposite is also perfectly true." And that's why I for one love it!

Isn't she a doll though? Just beautiful!