Movie Review - "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" directed by Mira Niar

Movie Review - "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" directed by Mira Niar

This blog is a part of my classroom activity of Postcolonial Studies: Film Screening: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Click here to show given task.

                                       

Cast :-

Riz Ahmed as Changez Khan

Kate Hudson as Erica

Liev Schreiber as Bobby Lincoln

Kiefer Sutherland as Jim Cross

Om Puri as Abu, Changez's father

Shabana Azmi as Ammi, Changez's mother

Meesha Shafi as Bina Khan, Changez's sister

                                    The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) by Mira Nair. She  is an Indian filmmaker and actress based in New York.She made films based on novels.

                                    She also made one movie named The Namesake. This movie The Namesake is based on one novel written by Jhumpa Lahiri under the same title The Namesake (2004). This film is released in 2006. This film is also very good and she given appropriate justice to this film also.

                                      If we talk about The Reluctant Fundamentalist this film is similar to the movie called  New York (film) released in 2009. In New York movie hero's motif is to take revenge and here in this movie we can say that hero's motif is good to forgive everyone.  

Movie Review - "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

The Fundamental Reluctant” is movie released in 2014, directed by Mira Nair, it is not less than any Hollywood movie, its script is written by  Mohsin Hamid, Mohsin is well known English writer in Pakistan who’s achieved readers of the world. This movie is all about political controversy and 9/11 attack, idea of East and West, American dream of Changez. Professor of Pakistan University Changez and Bobby Lincoln played a vital role in the movie.

Changez Khan, the hero of the novel, in frame narration story move forward, as Changez who at present live in Pakistan, tells his life story to an American journalist who is also secret agent of CIA. 

When Changez lives in America, he has to suffer a lot. he is very happy to get a job in an American company but then he realizes that whatever order is given by his boss is to be completed by him. He feels that Erica is also not faithful with him. She publishes some of his photos stating that “I had one Pakistani”. American police caught Changez doubting upon him as there were controversies regarding Muslims and Al Qaeda.

Three people, Changez, his boss and a African man are going somewhere and police asks to show them their passports and prove their identity. When they come to know that Changez is Pakistani, they take him and check his body. This shows that how a Pakistani man has to suffer in other country.Changez feels that hypocrisy, ignorance is there in America and so his dream breaks. He has to prove his identity everywhere in America.  

While concluding this we can say that the movie gives message to remove the colonialism between different nation and “to live and let the live”. This movie is related with the reality of the colonial nations and their capitalism and effect of  “ Third world “ country people that how to live life by becoming  equal but truth is always bitter and it harmful for Ego and Super Ego which leads us towards the difficulties of two different countries.

Here is the full movie

Movie Review: Midnight's Children

Movie Review: Midnight's Children - directed by Deepa Mehta

This blog is a part of my classroom activity of Postcolonial Studies: Film Screening: “Midnight's Children”.

Here is blog link of given task: 

Midnight children movie is

                                       Directed by Deepa Mehta

                                      Screenplay by : Salman Rushdie 

                                     Release date : 9 September 2012

                   The narrator of Midnight's Children is born at midnight on the day of India's independence from Britain. Bidisha investigates how Salman Rushdie uses the life of one man to explore Indian postcolonial experience.

                                      

                                              You wait a year for a film version of a Booker prize-winning magical realist novel largely concerned with people from the Indian subcontinent and widely considered to be unfilmable. Then suddenly two come along: Life of Pi and Midnight's Children. The lesser of the two, though a movie of ambition and distinction, Midnight's Children was published in 1981 and is adapted for the screen by its author Salman Rushdie, who also delivers the eloquent narration, a reworking of the book's framing device.

                                          As a film and novel, Midnight's Children is a great baggy work covering over 60 years in the turbulent history of India and Pakistan from the end of the second world war up to Indira Gandhi's repressive "Emergency" of the late 1970s,

                                       Rushdie's brilliant insight was to bring together the private and public lives of those involved by inventing a mystical bond between the children born around the midnight hour of 17 August 1947. The narrator and central character famously remarks: "I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country."

                                      And he and his peers are given special powers( Prophecy, Magic, Metamorphosis).And they become the embodiment of the best hope of the two nations during a period of bad faith, violence and the betrayal of democracy. At the centre is a variation of Mark Twain's tale The Prince and the Pauper: a rich boy and the son of a street musician are swapped at birth in the early seconds of 18.

                                   In the first post partition episode of Midnight's Children, we're briefly shown a poster of the 1957 Film Mother India. Midnight's children a sophisticated urban riposte of mother India's sentimental rural story.

                                They are united by this film in both sorrow and anger for what their homeland is , and drawn together in hopeful anticipation of what it still might be.

Here is full movie, 

  

                                     

                                                       

"The Birthday party" by Harold Pinter

Online thinking activity "The Birthday party" by Harold Pinter

This blog is part of my classroom activity on Harold Pinter's play "The Birthday Party".

Here is Link of given task.

               

                                       


                                           The Birthday Party is about Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player who lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town, "probably on the south coast, not too far from London".Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive supposedly on his birthday and who appear to have come looking for him, turn Stanley's apparently innocuous birthday party organised by Meg into a nightmare.

1. Why are two scenes of Lulu omitted from the movie?

Ans:The reason of omitting two scenes of Lulu can be focusing upon the confusing situation of Stanley rather than Lulu. If those scenes were there in last act, the audience would focus on the character of a woman who was abused by men and she would have been judged as victim rather than the protagonist.

2. Is movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Where you able to feel it while reading the text?

Ans.The sound plays a vital role in the film. It gives us the surreal effect. The sound always helps in giving the menacing effect to the audience. Even the sights captured by Camera plays a vital role. It is interesting to see that Closeup is used as tool which magnifies trivia. For example:- Meg pouring corn flakes in a bowl. While in the important conversation characters are shown in one frame and camera doesn’t move. For example:- When Stanley is asking Meg about two strangers.

3. Do you feel the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie? Where you able to feel the same while reading the text.

Ans.Lurking danger lies in the whole play, text and movie. But in movie the lurking danger clearly shows in the scene of ‘Birthday Party’. Whereas in the text we fully depends upon the language especially on dialogue and each and every steps we felt dangers.

4. What do you read in 'newspaper' in the movie? Petey is reading newspaper to Meg, it torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by Petey in last scene.

Ans.We know that Newspaper gives us information what happens in society, we can says that in play also connects us or shows us reality of society. We found that McCann cut newspaper. In movie Cutting of newspaper is symbol of killing. At the last seen those pieces are hidden by Petty.

5. Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man's Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of room like a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of camera? 

Ans.  In blind man's bluff, the camera is positioned on the head of the McCann, which can seen as artist-Webber imagination is restricted by society.

6. "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretence crumbles." (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture). Does this happen in the movie?

Ans. Yes, it is happen in the movie. Unpredictable dialogue find out at the beginning to the end. Kitchen and the room of birth day party show an enclosed space. And kitchen and room of birthday party which is full of objects and no space for human beings. Readers cannot reach at conclusion that who is better than whom. Because if we as a reader take side of Stanley as a artist, he seemed like innocent. On the other hand both of that characters who does their job only. Petey and Meg are totally unaware about the things. But on the other side it seems like that they all are pretending to each other. So, one side we mercy on the characters but on the other side as a reader we are in darkness. Pinter used reverse dramatic irony. So, we cannot reached at ultimate truth instead of that all the things remain political.

7. How does viewing movie help in better understanding of the play ‘The Birthday Party’ with its typical characteristic (like painteresque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger)?

Ans. While watching a movie is more effective than reading text because during movies we find that giggling sounds, fear, and mystique, tolerant of dialogues in the movie. 

8.With which of the following observations you agree:

o   “It probably wasn't possible to make a satisfactory film of "The Birthday Party."

o   “It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin”[1][3]. (Ebert)

Ans. "It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin."

As the present film has possible & required elements to reflect the techniques that may Pinter wanted to convey thorough his play. Lack of understanding if happen then it may depends on personal or individual perspective than general that can give the scope to make it better than this too.

10. Who would be your choice of actors to play the role of characters?

Ans. I would like to choose characters like this,

Stanley- kay kay menon 
Goldberg- Anupam kher 
McCann- Nawazuddin Siddiki
Lulu- tabu