THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST (2012)

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Director: Mira Nair
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Martin Donovan, Nelsan Ellis, Haluk Bilginer, Meesha Shafi
RunTime: 2 hrs 10 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Coarse Language)
Released By: InnoForm Media & Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 1 August 2013 

Synopsis: 2011, Lahore. At a café a Pakistani man named Changez (Riz Ahmed) tells Bobby (Liev Schreiber), an American journalist, about his experiences in the United States. Roll back ten years, and we find a younger Changez fresh from Princeton, seeking his fortune on Wall Street. The American Dream seems well within his grasp, complete with a smart and gorgeous artist girlfriend, Erica (Kate Hudson). But when the Twin Towers are attacked, a cultural divide slowly begins to crack open between Changez and Erica. Changez’s dream soon begins to slip into nightmare: he is transformed from a well-educated, upwardly mobile businessman to a scapegoat and perceived enemy. The film is based on the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by Mohsin Hamid, which was rated one of the books to define the decade by The Guardian and reached # 4 on the New York Times Best Seller List.

Movie Review:

It’s telling that the first thing which comes to mind when we hear the word ‘fundamentalist’ is Islam; indeed, in today’s geopolitical context arguably and irrevocably changed since the events of 9/11, we so quickly associate ‘fundamentalists’ with Islamic radicals, the ones we hear setting off bombs killing innocent lives - the most recent example of that being the Boston Marathon bombers. And yet, if you think hard about it, America’s capitalist society was very much fundamentalist in nature, with its clear and unequivocal focus on the elements that bring about profit and profitability and a disregard of whatever and more importantly whoever does not contribute to that.

That’s the irony at the heart of Indian director Mira Nair’s passion project for the last two years, a gripping and prescient tale that is ever more relevant now than ever. Adapting from Pakistan-born writer Mohsin Hamid’s critically acclaimed novel of the same name (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), Nair’s frequent collaborator Ami Boghani has teamed up with Hamid himself to create a movie that Hamid accurately calls “inspired by” his work of fiction. Their accomplishment is certainly admirable - after all, Hamid’s book was essentially a monologue by its protagonist’s struggle with the values of American capitalism and that of his own culture, its very elusiveness eluding a straightforward print-to-screen.

And so, while keeping the framing of the protagonist’s narration to an American in a Lahore tea house, William Wheeler’s screenplay gives an identity to that American. The enigmatic Pakistani lecturer Changez (pronounced Chan-gez) Khan is now speaking to American journalist Bobby Lincoln (Live Schreiber); and instead of a casual meeting, their face-to-face takes place against the backdrop of an off-the-street kidnapping of an American professor by a wannabe Al-Qaeda militant group, of which Changez is suspected to be a member of. Across the street from the tea house, a crack United States ops-team is listening intently - despite his credentials, Lincoln is a CIA spook, and Changez exposes the former's duplicitous identity very early on.

Still, the conversation goes on, with Changez cautioning right at the start that looks can be deceiving, imploring Lincoln to listen to his whole story and not just the bits he wants to hear. Slowly but surely demolishing our set view of a terrorist born in Pakistan and raised in America, Changez recounts his journey to America at the age of 18 for a Princeton education, his subsequent recruitment as a financial analyst at a high-powered Wall Street firm, and finally his giving up of the American dream he had attained by returning to Pakistan and accepting the position of an academic at Lahore University.

Though the narrative’s framing suggests that she may water the story down to the point of Hollywood cliché, Nair displays no such intention, keeping her movie a character-driven study of an gifted intellectual who becomes increasingly disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream as much as he is later on of radicalism in his own home country. Without explicitly saying so, Nair spends more than half the movie exploring the job-destroying capitalist economic fundamentalism that Changez’s job requires him to be a part of. And yet his fundamental belief that everyone gets an equal chance in America is unmistakably challenged as he is stopped at airports and arrested by police officers post-9/11, a glaring reminder of his roots as a Third World man in an imperialist nation.

It will take a moral betrayal by his girlfriend - the avant-garde photographer Erica (Kate Hudson) - and a business trip to Istanbul to shut down a 30-year-old publishing house to harden his resolve to return to his cultural roots. Are we meant to sympathise with his plight? No, Nair paints an unvarnished look at Changez’s ethical struggles, trusting in the wisdom of her own audience to draw their own conclusions and decide where their sympathies lie. What’s clear is this - like the reporter whom Changez is relating his story to, we are challenged to assess our preconceived notions of this man. The ending is a particular kicker though, a sad but accurate reflection of why it is so difficult for the vicious cycle of innocent killing plaguing our modern world to be over.

That Nair’s film manages to be so compelling is credit to British actor Riz Ahmed’s charismatic and confident performance, particularly admirable in its subtle transformations to portray an increasingly complex character. Ahmed’s scenes with Schreiber crackle with tension and suspense, especially as the former pushes the latter to look beyond the obvious and keep an open mind before jumping to judgment. Other supporting actors like Sutherland as Changez’s hard-charging boss, Nelsan Ellis (from HBO’s True Blood) as his Wall Street colleague, and Om Puri as his father round out a solid ensemble.

The beauty in Nair’s telling lies ultimately in the very intricacies of her tale, which refuses to play by any Hollywood rulebook and instead strives to be authentic, edgy and thought-provoking. One recognises in Changez the conflict that must lie within the hearts of many non-native Americans, and the very sparks of radicalism that precipitate the tragedies we see on the news. There is no neat solution at the end of Nair’s film, as there isn’t in the realities of today’s increasingly divided world - but in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, we are challenged to look beyond the neat moniker of Islamic fundamentalism and recognise the complexities, ironies and hypocrisy within. 

Movie Rating:

(Smart and provocative, this character study of a gifted intellectual who may or may not be a terrorist is a riveting watch from start to finish)

Review by Gabriel Chong