The Reluctant Fundamentalist

May 3, 2013

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A native of India, director Mira Nair has built a career on her ability to bring Eastern stories to Western audiences. Gaining steam with “Mississippi Masala” and breaking through with “Monsoon Wedding,” Nair now delivers “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a topical, globe-trotting thriller based on Mohsin Hamid’s best-seller. It’s the filmmaker’s most ambitious work to date, and surely her most provocative — a movie that feels culturally vital despite its unmistakable missteps.

The story is bookended by a meeting in Lahore between two men: American journalist Bobby (Liev Schreiber) and enigmatic Pakistani Changez (Riz Ahmed), a professor presumed to be involved in terrorist acts. The film then flashes back to pre-9/11 New York, when Changez was a Wall Street superstar and folks with brown complexions weren’t perpetually eyed with suspicion. But the high life is short-lived, and the most telling shot sees Changez’s face reflected in a window, the towers crumbling on the other side of the glass. Eventually feeling betrayed by the country whose classic “dream” he achieved, the hotshot sees his worldview fall to pieces, and retreats to his homeland with anger in his heart. But is he guilty of any crimes?

The answer to the question is ultimately the knife’s edge on which the film rests, and there’s some genuine tension to the uncertainty. Nair’s problem, though, is that she doesn’t give the story its due credit, diluting themes and morals by overstating them, and shattering us-versus-them ambiguity that would have been better left intact. (Moreover, Kate Hudson, as Changez’s American girlfriend, is glaringly miscast.)

But almost all of that is forgivable when one considers what the movie achieves. However spoon-fed for broader audiences, the ideas and views — which cover the deplorable ugliness of post-9/11 “patriotism,” and the plight of foreign-born citizens falling victim to fear and ignorance — are far too scarce in popular media.

One could argue that the film takes a certain anti-American stance, but what it truly does is plumb the dangers of forgoing understanding for rash, reactionary impulses, presenting a lesson for every soul under the sun.