Brick Lane, directed by Sarah Gavron ; Tricycle Cinema, Kilburn
It's a long time since I read Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane . But I think this is not only a decent transfer to film, but probably does what all good screen adaptations do, which is to depart from and build something new from its source, and even in some ways improve on it. Not dramatically or thematically special, perhaps, but it's visually stunning at times, beautiful to hear, and has some very, very sexy bits: worth your ticket price.
I was a reader-judge for the Guardian First Book Award when Brick Lane was shortlisted back in 2003, and might not have read it otherwise. I suppose I was a little suspicious of a much-hyped first novel by the latest youngish and gorgeous literary starlet, and doubtful that a cross-cultural story of arrival in England would be likely to rise above the clichéd. I found it much better than that. Not always impeccably written - sometimes I wasn't sure what characters were in the scene I was reading, and sometimes the prose was very ordinary - but involving, particularly the main character Nazneen. Naive she may be, seeming only very late in the book to get real insight into what she wants from life, but I found myself caring about her and her daughters. Caring too, about her husband Chanu, the proud yet ridiculous husband whose idealism about England is slowly beaten out of him by life, but who (like a Molière character) simply replaces it with the idealism of return to Bangladesh. In some ways the book is depressing - and I can understand why some members of the London Bengali community felt it was negative about them. But it's a readable, absorbing story of a woman discovering herself through experiences of loyalty and exploitation, of illicit passion and of a love that's more humdrum but perhaps also more enduring.
And I think this film version does it more than justice. At the heart of the film, Tannishtha Chatterjee plays Nazneen, and the writing of the part and her performance do involve us just as Nazneen does in the novel, and arguably her change of outlook comes more gradually and more convincingly in this version. As far as performances are concerned, though, Satish Kaushik I think does best, as her husband Chanu, bringing completely to life the pathetic, disappointing and infuriating husband, a clown of a man who in spite of it commands affection and a strange kind of respect in spite of everything. The novel is in turns contemptuous of him and kind to him, but this film portrayal notably makes a whole piece of him.
Some aspects of the book are lost, of course - the neighbours Mumtaz, the appalling Mrs. Islam and even Nazneen's dauthers feature only fleetingly, and the film focuses very definitely on England. Although we do read some of the letters Nazneen's sister Hasina, whose path might have been Nazneen's had she not emigrated to Britain, we are not so aware of Bangladesh as we were in the novel. These are sound decisions, though, and leave you with a full and faithful rendering of the book. Most faithful of all, and most like the novel, is the depiction of Nazneen's involvement with Karim, the young middleman in tight jeans, delivering jeans from his uncle's factory for her to work on with her "goldmine", a second-hand sewing machine she buys to earn desperately-needed money for her family. Their affair is as steamy, as sexy and as much of a fantasy as it is in the novel:
... he prayed in her home several more times. As he took the mat from her, the tips of their fingers found each other and she smelled the crisp smell of his shirt.
The smell of limes.
It was one of the flaws in the novel, I thought, that Karim was such a fantasy figure: a sexual fantasy, more like the male lead in some terribly up-to-date urban Mills and Boon than a lover in literary fiction. But even this works much better on screen. There's still a slight feeling of fantasy about him, and it - my friend Jatinder said she felt there was some ambiguity about whether the affair or at least its consummation was supposed to have been real. The sexiness of the attraction between these two people is beyond doubt, though, and the scenes between them are excellent sexy cinema. Tannishtha Chatterjee is just right - very girl-next-door yet beautiful once you notice her, as Karim did Nazneen; and Christopher Simpson as Karim is one of those men so good-looking that even a very straight man can see what he's got.
I have one criticism of the film, or rather, one disappointment: times have changed since 2003 when the book was published, and I for one would have welcomed a much tougher and deeper engagement with the issues of identity and Islam, politics and extremism, than the book offered: I think the screenwriters missed a big opportunity to expand the role of Karim's increasing radicalisation and deal more fully with these very live issues.
If you've any doubt about this film, though, let me settle it by saying the thing that's crucial about it but that I've left till last. This film is at least at times visually stunning: the opening sequence of Nazneen's early life in Bangladesh so much so that you're intensely moved even before the story's really begun. And it's this visual beauty, a beauty that flows into the London scenes too, that gives the film a completely new dimension. The director Sarah Gavron might have taken a dowdy, kitchen-sink approach, but what she does is fresher than that, and more memorable. The film is audibly stunning, too: Jocelyn Pook's music is hauntingly lush (you can hear some of it at the film's marketing website ) and features the astonishingly beautiful voice of Najma Akhtar, whose singing I've admired since the late 1980s and who should, in a sane world, be one of the world's most famous singers. You can read more about her here and here , and if you're in the US you can hear her here : listen to Har Sitam Aap Ka, and you'll know why I'm so gushing. Or, listen to the all-too-short snatch of Memories of a Summer on the movie's website.
You think I enjoyed this film? I did.
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