On The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Based on Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel, this adaptation succeeds by not feeling tied to the novel. The novel adopts a point of view framework, offering us the story through Changez in the same way Kafka’s K is the omniscient narrator in The Trial. Director Mira Nair realises the limits of such a structure on film (a reason why The Great Gatsby suffered in Lurhmann’s film) and expands the universe. Therefore, The Reluctant Fundamentalist becomes not only an intelligent, slow burning political thriller, but a film with an authentically evocative mise en scene. While Changez remains the film’s narrator and his ideologies and how we are meant to interpret them is key to the story, Nair fleshes out the ridiculously named Bobby Lincoln (is there a more nationalistic American name?) and allows us to see the, albeit briefly, the feelings of the secondary characters. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a film worthy of a larger audience, but is unfortunately, being a thriller of ideologies, is likely to lose out to more conventional thrillers.