The Reluctant Fundamentalist Review Paper
Movie Review
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
It is not easy to do justice to a book just quite as dynamic as Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, yet Mira Nair has done a spectacular job of bringing to film what Hamid did to literature. The movie features extra ordinary talent from the East and the West. The esteemed Om Puri who plays a virtuoso poet along with Shabana Azmi grace the screen with their presence playing parents to a spoilt Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), whilst Pakistani singer/actress MeshaShafi plays his sister Bina. The plot revolves around Changez, a Pakistani boy who goes off to study at Princeton, subsequently scoring a job at Underwood Samason. Before starting employment, he goes to Greece where he falls for the coquette Erica, played by the svelte Kate Hudson. Following this courtship the twin-towers are attacked and Changez finds himself a victim to the many acts of degradation faced by people from the subcontinent in America especially Pakistanis. Not being able to take US interference in Pakistan’s affairs coupled with his current treatment in the US Changez slowly begins to distance himself from his job and ultimately we find him teaching at Lahore University, as a pedant of unacceptable and ascetic US intervention in Pakistan, however, the film coherently clarifies that he’s also an agnostic of irrational anti-US belief. The story shifts to the present day scenario where Rainier, an American professor and a colleague of Changez, is kidnapped with the kidnappers asking for the release of 690 detainees from the Kot Lakhpat Muslim concentration camp in return along with seven hundred thousand ponds for children in Waziristan. A CIA informant, Bobby Lincoln, arranges a meeting with Changez at a café in Lahore, as the latter is found to be accused or suspected of being involved in the kidnapping case. The movie reaches its climax when during their conversation and exchange of information, protests and rallies grow,
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
It is not easy to do justice to a book just quite as dynamic as Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, yet Mira Nair has done a spectacular job of bringing to film what Hamid did to literature. The movie features extra ordinary talent from the East and the West. The esteemed Om Puri who plays a virtuoso poet along with Shabana Azmi grace the screen with their presence playing parents to a spoilt Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), whilst Pakistani singer/actress MeshaShafi plays his sister Bina. The plot revolves around Changez, a Pakistani boy who goes off to study at Princeton, subsequently scoring a job at Underwood Samason. Before starting employment, he goes to Greece where he falls for the coquette Erica, played by the svelte Kate Hudson. Following this courtship the twin-towers are attacked and Changez finds himself a victim to the many acts of degradation faced by people from the subcontinent in America especially Pakistanis. Not being able to take US interference in Pakistan’s affairs coupled with his current treatment in the US Changez slowly begins to distance himself from his job and ultimately we find him teaching at Lahore University, as a pedant of unacceptable and ascetic US intervention in Pakistan, however, the film coherently clarifies that he’s also an agnostic of irrational anti-US belief. The story shifts to the present day scenario where Rainier, an American professor and a colleague of Changez, is kidnapped with the kidnappers asking for the release of 690 detainees from the Kot Lakhpat Muslim concentration camp in return along with seven hundred thousand ponds for children in Waziristan. A CIA informant, Bobby Lincoln, arranges a meeting with Changez at a café in Lahore, as the latter is found to be accused or suspected of being involved in the kidnapping case. The movie reaches its climax when during their conversation and exchange of information, protests and rallies grow,