Film

'Brick Lane': Indie drama is short on nuance

By Daniel Montgomery

Friday, June 20, 2008

As ‘Brick Lane’ begins, it bears no small resemblance to Mira Nair’s ‘The Namesake’ , in regard to its story—both films follow the lives of young Bengali women married off to husbands living in the Western world—and in regard to its style. As Nair did, director Sarah Gavron focuses her camera on colors and textures—traditional garments in bright hues, clear water and lily pads, and deep, foreboding skies.

The first time we see Nazneen, she is a child, playing with her younger sister in Bangladesh, their respective gold and purple dresses set in contrast against a verdant field. Her mother, who lived by the mantra “The test of life is to endure,” decides that she no longer can endure and drowns herself. Why she does this is never made explicit, but we can infer it from the life her elder daughter comes to lead.

When the action moves to ‘Brick Lane’, the London neighborhood where an adult Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) lives with her husband and two daughters, the difference in setting is immediately understood. Nazneen frequently flashes back to brief childhood memories, which serve to set apart the natural splendor of Bangladesh from the colder brick, stone, and concrete tones of urban London. And there are closely observed details that highlight the shift away from traditional values, as when she looks with thinly-veiled shock at a Bangladeshi neighbor who nonchalantly reveals her short hair and puffs on a cigarrette.

Once the screenplay settles into its primary conflict, however, comparisons to ‘The Namesake’ end. And so begins the shift of a promising culture-shock story into a familiar love triangle, whose developments more resemble those of a romance novel—it’s the Bangladeshi story Danielle Steele never wrote. While she suffers Chanu (Satish Kaushik), her boorish husband—indeed, “endures” him, as would make her mother proud—she encounters a passionate younger man, Karim (Christopher Simpson), who is handsome, idealistic, and desires her.

The problem is the characterizations, which are simplistic. Chanu is established by the screenplay, adapted by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones from Monica Ali’s 2003 novel, as little more than an enumeration of reasons to hate him. He is dismissive of his wife and daughters, stubborn, quick to anger, makes foolish decisions that he thinks are wise, snores, and even expects his wife to remove corns from his feet. If all that isn’t enough, there is also a sex scene that is among the least erotic ever filmed; there’s a saying regarding a wife’s submission that goes, “Close your eyes and think of England,” but when Chanu pounces, Nazneen literally closes her eyes and thinks of Bangladesh.

There are two scenes primarily that give Chanu added dimension, but they’re too little too late. The first is genuinely moving: After his daughter disrespects him, angry over his decision to move the family to Bangladesh, he yells at her through her locked door, but his reprimand reveals that his bullish cynicism has been hard learned through experience. The second is less successful because it involves politics that have not been well enough established by the film: He rails against anti-discrimination activists calling themselves Bengali Tigers—though the tone of their message is more suggestive of Bengali Panthers—decrying Muslim-on-Muslim violence, but it’s not clear how this speech applies to the present circumstance, or what it’s meant to say about Chanu.

Karim, the lover, is allowed to be more complex, but of course he is made into the counterpoint for Chanu. He is affectionate where Chanu is domineering, attentive where Chanu is curt, lean where Chanu is fat. More interesting than the emotional connection, however, is the cultural disconnection between Karim and Nazneen. She is pulled between the influences of Eastern tradition and Western passion. She must make the choice to be governed by duty or desire.

Nazneen is a strong central character, and Chatterjee’s performance anchors the film, but there are details that feel unclear, I suspect compressed from the source novel. She keeps correspondence with her sister through letters, and an important revelation about the sister’s life is rushed through with a single feverish montage where Nazneen falls ill, or perhaps it is simply the shame and grief that overcome her. And when Nazneen finally makes her decisions—between her two men and two countries—it is for reasons we’re never truly made to believe. The love she describes at film’s end is not one the screenplay has adequately shown us. The true love story at the heart of’_ Brick Lane_’, we discover, is one the filmmakers neglected to tell.

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