BRICK LANE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
"If Allah wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men," Nazneen
(Tannishtha Chatterjee), the heroine of the melodramatic BRICK LANE, tells
us in its voice-over introduction. A weepie that alternates between the
poignant and the trite, BRICK LANE follows Nazneen's quiet struggles as
she
lives a forced life in London. Actually, the run-down tenement area where
she lives could be a Bangladesh enclave in any large city in the world,
since it is so insulated it becomes its own island.
When we first meet Nazneen in the 1980s, she is a happy and giddy teenager
in her native land of Bangladesh. An arranged marriage tears her serene
life asunder, as she is uprooted from the sister she loves and is sent to
be
the bride of Chanu Ahmed (Satish Kau****k). Chanu is a fat, gregarious man
who sees women's role in the world as being completely subservient to the
men. His wife goes along with this, not speaking up to him for the next
twenty years.
The Ahmed apartment on Brick Lane effectively becomes Nazneen's prison.
She
does venture out to buy groceries and sewing materials, but most of her
life
is lived within its exceedingly drab walls. Flashbacks to her homeland
remind us how lush and inviting it was in stark contrast to the sad and
dreary place she lives today. The cinematographic palate makes a dramatic
****ft with Bangladesh appearing only in bright primary colors, while
London
is painted mainly in shades of grays and dirty browns.
Nazneen reluctantly comes to believe that Karim (Christopher Simpson), a
hunk and the leader of a militant Islamic group, may be her salvation. A
side story concerns an Islamic loan shark who claims to be no such thing,
since the Koran strictly forbids the charging of interest. Nevertheless,
this old grandmotherly type forces the Ahmed family to repay their small
loan many times over, in a usurious loan that never dies.
The acting is good, but the script is overwrought. It does, however,
contain a few nice gems of dialog. "The thing about getting older," Chanu
tells his cheating wife, "is that you don't need everything to be possible
any more. You just need some things to be certain." My favorite line,
which reminded me of the "plastics" quote from THE GRADUATE, comes when
Chanu decides, "Soap is the future." He plans on ex****ting bars of soap,
as
a way to cure his perennial employment problems.
The problems with Sarah Gavron's ham-handed direction are many. One
example
shows it best. When Nazneen gets an im****tant letter from her much
beloved
sister, Nazneen reads it in the pouring rain outside of her apartment,
soaking herself and the letter. She could easily have stepped back a few
feet, thereby staying dry and preserving the letter that she so obviously
treasures.
BRICK LANE runs 1:41. It is rated PG-13 for "some ***uality and brief
strong language" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film opens in limited release in the United States on Friday, June 20,
2008.
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