LOS ANGELES — “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is Mira Nair’s most ambitious project to date. The director assembled an international cast of Hollywood, Pakistani, and Indian stars to tell the story of two vastly different worlds and a man caught between them.
The film depicts the tensions that arise between the United States and the Middle East in the wake of 9/11.
Changez (Riz Ahmed) is a young Pakistani Princeton grad chasing his American dream. He’s dating a beautiful girl (Kate Hudson) and working on Wall Street. However, a cultural divide slowly tears his relationship apart in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and he is transformed into the perceived enemy.
The movie, which opened in theaters last week, is based on the 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid.
Nair spoke with BLOUIN ARTINFO about “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and why it was so important for her to make.
You’ve said this film is an exercise in personal healing and reconnecting. Can you explain what you meant by that?
Ever since 9/11 we have received so much information about the war and about the conflict. The movies and newspapers all talk about Islam phobia or creating Islam phobia not knowing the other side. I think it’s about time we made a film that has that dialogue at the heart of it. The dialogue between an American character and a Pakistani man who does love America. The part about personal healing and reconnecting. I am an Indian director making a film about Pakistan. A Pakistan that normally Indians are not allowed to visit because there is so much conflict between these two countries. Also someone who has married into a Muslim family and regarding the family as completely my own. I have a 21-year-old son who at 16 was questioned by immigration with his parents. At 18 he was taken away into a room to be questioned and we waited for him. Now he’s 21 and we wonder what is the next step for people like us. There are so many unfortunate incidents and profiling and harassment that has created fear. I feel a lot of it is based on ignorance. It’s based on what we don’t know about the other. In making ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” I wanted to question who is the other? Is the other our self? Are human beings really the heart of both sides of the planet?
What kind of reaction do you anticipate regarding your choice of shooting a Pakistani story in India?
I have been amazed by the fact that I’ve been completely embraced in that pursuit of shooting Pakistan in India. Anything can happen at any moment… but I was very happy I got the respect and complete openness that was given to me in Delhi to make this film. Also the same in Pakistan. They were reasonably considering me filming there, but the insurance companies couldn’t guarantee our safety. So we went to Pakistan for second unit filming work. It hasn’t been that difficult to film in India. We even filmed bits of Turkey in India.
Your films have a really great balance of social commentary and sophistication. How conscious is this balance for you?
I make films about things that get under my skin and don’t let me go. I want to take you on a ride that has the full appetite of life. I’m someone who deeply believes in laughter and fun and fashion and beauty. I’m as obsessed with photography and each frame of sensuality and the music. These are the elements I feel so privileged to work with as a filmmaker. I think any film is a political act. You chose to tell a part of a story or the whole story, whichever way you want to look at it and I always feel if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will tell them. When it comes to do with anything with Islam, there is such a schism with the Western world and the Islamic world. I feel like in a way we’re only given one side of the story forever. So it was very important for me to make a film about the other side, but in a way [that allows us to] see ourselves in what has been this other for so long. For me this was very much about the intention of making it, but while still taking you on a journey that will transport you and entertain you.
Talk about the scene where Hudson’s character, Erica, puts on an art exhibit in honor of Changez. It was so interesting because while her intentions were good, her actions and artwork were horribly offensive.
I wanted to reinvent the character of Erica that is different from the book. In the book she gives up on that and disappears. For me, I like to read characters as alive and as complicated as we all are. Erica truly fell in love with Changez and 9/11 has just happened. She’s part of a downtown art scene, which I’ve met a lot of people and I’ve seen believe they’ve created art on what they think they may know, but they really don’t know the depth or the complications of it or the layers of it. Or what even the limelight signifies to the other. That kind of attitude really does exist in the world. That was the fine line we were putting in Erica’s art. The last person Changez expects to be misunderstood by is his lover. She was misguided and it translated into something that would be hard to come back after a hard break up, which does happen in life. It’s not a pretty picture, but life is not always pretty.
This is the first film by an Indian director to open the Venice Film Festival. What has that meant for you?
It was a great honor. It was extraordinary. I had an encounter that night that I will never forget. The only movie in the world I wish I had directed is “The Battle of Algiers” — Gilo Pontecorvo’s classic. I love this movie. It gave me the template to speak of both sides in my film — the American and the Pakistani side with equal intelligence. At the end of the Venice screening, I had this older woman make her way across the tent to me at the banquet that followed. She came and found me and said, “I’m Gilo Pontecorvo’s widow and I’ve come to tell you that Gilo lives in you.” I could have fainted. She had no idea that was the film that has kept me going all these years to make this film. I am so humbled and so moved.