My Son the Fanatic

A Pakistani taxi driver in Britain (Om Puri) is plagued by a bad cosmic joke that seems co-written by Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis: his son, rather than becoming an unrecognizable assimilate, turns into a jihad-embracing Muslim fundamentalist. At the same time, the warmth of a white hooker (Rachel Griffiths) beckons, to the chagrin and hissing tongues of his local countrymen.

The writer Hanif Kureishi's onetime Benetton smugness has mellowed into ripe colors of rue, mockery and regret as he eases into middle age, and this adaptation of his short story is a lovely, surprisingly beautifully shot, sneakily haunting small movie. The dialogue sometimes has a novelish explicitness, and the performances are variable--Puri sometimes drifts into F. Murray Abraham terrain, but he has an amazing, craggy, pain-absorbent face. But the movie has a real subject: the ways in which postmod culture-hybridity isn't always a rainbow-colored day at the beach. And the warmth amid desperation of the central relationship suggests what Neil Jordan's MONA LISA might have been without the smoky-sax romanticism.

The sad thing about seeing this movie was that, after Miramax gave the movie one of their unceremonious heave-hos (par for the course for their good movies), the audience, unblanketed by buzz, hype, an aura of hot-ticket, reacted as shruggingly as critics seem to have. Too bad: MY SON THE FANATIC evokes the sweet, melancholy fatalism of seventies pictures like THE NICKEL RIDE and STRAIGHT TIME. It has the atmosphere of an overcast crime picture without the crime. And it has at least a handful of real, breathing people in it--as rare an occurrence these days as a flight of the dodo.

I think this movie will resonate especially with any first-and-up generation person whose parents emigrated from east to west. The innocence and almost childlike approach taken by Parvez, Om Puri's character, to things light and dark in England reminded me very much of my own experiences in trying to show my parents "how things work" in America. He has done a beautiful job with this character. All in all a well-written and enlightening movie for anyone who is curious about the complex and often convoluted dynamic between immigrants and their transplanted realities.

While this film is superficially about East Indian immigrants in Yorkshire, its themes are universal. Anyone who is or is related to an immigrant should feel at home here.

As far as religion goes, these characters could be Jewish or Christian as easily as Moslem. The mediaevalist/modernist conflict is the same. There's no reason why the audience for this film should be just a parochial one.

Om Puri gives a brilliant and nuanced performance as the central character, the resilient Punjabi cab driver. Rachel Griffiths is very fine as always as his kindred spirit, a hooker, although her character here is a little more limited in scope than those she portrayed in "Muriel's Wedding" and especially "Hilary and Jackie". Stellan Skarsgård also steps into a pair of shoes a few sizes smaller than those he has worn in the past.

Unheralded though it may have been, this is another thoughtful comedy-drama from Hanif Kureishi, author of "My Beautiful Laundrette" amongst others.

My Son the Fanatic was a surprizing treat. I never heard of it before renting at blockbuster last night. I don't think it ever played in Toronto theatres. Never the less I must applaud at Hanif Kureshi's yet again bold and honest attempt at highlighting a recent phenomenon in the South Asian community: the son going "holier than thou" on the family. This film touched me personally because in my case the opposite happened; my father turned fanatic muslim on me. Hanif Qureshi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" is one of my favourite films of all time and after "Budha of Suburbia" I fell in love with this brilliant man and his work. "My Son" is a lot less shocking but still weaves it's way through the father and son conflict elegantly and I am shocked at how blind the Oscar nominators are when it comes to Om Puri's brilliant acting! This is the first film portraying South Asians where the wife has some personality and actually speaks out so I see her as a mother, a wife and a woman that I know because she exists in my community. She is dull and fat and stuck in her little world within the four walls of her home. I dislike her but I know her. The subtle emotions and body language of this lower middle-class family might not be fully understood by a non-south asian critic and that is why some find it moves slowly sometimes. I could not agree with Earnest Hardy more when he says this film (and others by the writer) "endorse a morality of compassion". I think that is the only moral value worth pushing!

My Son The Fanatic demands repeated viewings for its appreciation. It is a dark comedy about an affable taxi driver in the throes of an alcoholic depression, and the eventual disintegration of his family unit.

It starts off making you think that this is going to be a comedy about a social-ladder-climbing father undermined by his son's discovery and subsequent rapture of Islamic fundamentalism. When re-viewing the consistency of the tones and hues, it seems that most scenes are being seen through the main character's (Parvez) eyes. And he turns out to be the most unreliable of narrators -- a literary device difficult to translate into film. In most of the darker and smoky hues, Parvez seems to be a warm, loving, tolerant, supportive, and protective soul.

In the lighter-toned scenes, we learn that Parvez is actually is clueless to who he is and how he is perceived. The fact is that he is a pathetic failure as a husband, father, and "career" man -- a 25-year taxi driver in a poor town in England (Does anyone know what city/town this is supposed to be? It was unclear to me.) where the cab drivers serve as a conduit between prostitutes and their clients. Throughout the movie, he sinks further into the throes of an alcoholic depression. He is an affable and engaging drunk, but a drunk nonetheless.

His son's rejection of his depressed and drunken father manifests itself in turning to Islamic Fundamentalism. His wife tries to awaken him as to what is going on, but to no avail. Pervez's sodden eyes sees life only in his own terms. Pervez sees the holy man as a fraud, and thus invents a scene in his mind that everyone else denies, played in near-total darkness, where the holy man asks him for immigration help from his (actually non-existent) political connections with the Fingerhuts, who despise him.

Someone else correctly pointed out that the son's adulation of Ayatollah Khomeni is inconsistent with the Pakistani fundamentalist sects that populate Karachi. This is the one well-lit scene where falsehood prevails, but I think that was just a fact-checking error.

As he sinks deeper, Pervez conjures up a loving relationship with his favorite whore, the reality of which is depicted in the final scenes as the credits roll.

The movie was never really about his son at all. His life was never really about the love he invested in his family at all. It is about a disintegration of a once-noble soul due to depression and alcoholism, and how the world looks through his forgiving eyes.

This is a fascinating study in duality, but you need to watch it twice to see it that way. Bravura performances by Puri, the actress who played the wife, and Griffiths as the multi-wigged prostitute are a joy to behold. There are slow and murky patches, but worth sticking with as a fascinating exploration into the culture clashes and reality blurring characteristic of alcoholic depression -- a disease with an acutely higher incidence in the UK among Asian immigrants.

Well worth watching.