Brick Lane

Before I go any further - I have not read the book. I might now do so, however, as I believe with books and movies, it's usually best to see the film first. So much has to be lost when one transfers a story to screen, that the book is almost always an enriching experience.

I fell over this almost in error at my local DVD store, so I did not see it on a big screen, which I would have liked. quite apart from the scenery and photography, it might have helped to be able to see the sub titles! There weren't that many of those, not enough to spoil the story.

I felt that the early childhood scenes, in their innocence and sudden suicide of the mother, then leading to the point where the father could not keep both daughters at home and so arranged the marriage (my interpretation) to this "educated man" in England, were heartbreaking in retrospect, and there was quite a bit of yearning and retrospection for the poor bride. We met her some astonishing 17 years later, with her teenage daughter and younger child, not sure how old she was. They were not afraid of life, whereas their mother seemed to be virtually housebound from terror. When she met the neighbour who lent/gave the sewing machine to her, it was an enormously liberating experience for her and she began to think and act differently. The young man who was the catalyst in the change for the family, could have had two heads, she was so desperate for the fun and affection that she believed her sister to be experiencing. Her husband, a bumbling poor soul, whom life constantly overlooked was unable to cope with his daughter's puberty let alone the mounting reaction to 9/11. He became more lovable as the film progressed, obviously to both Nazeem and myself.

The usurer who tried to blackmail Nazeem into extra payments, the neighbour and the others with small parts in the story were all as exquisitely drawn as the main characters. Nazeem began to understand that her life was her reality and when she held her husband's hand on the way home from the Bengal Tigers' meeting, one had a real sense of her maturity. There is so much more to this story than the top layer. I loved so many aspects of it - the acting, the photography, the story. Maybe it was simplified almost beyond belief, but that is normal. I found it moving, educational and hugely enjoyable. I shall recommend it.

This is a masterpiece of the first rank, as if Satyajit Ray had come back from the dead to do one final great work, and yet the director is a young English girl named Sarah Gavron, who will obviously go from triumph to triumph in the future. The film, the director, the script writer, the cinematographer, the editor, and the superb musical score all deserve Oscars. But most of all, so do Tannishtha Chatterjee as Best Actress and Satish Kaushik who plays her husband as Best Actor. This is one of the most devastatingly tragic and emotional films in years. My wife and I saw it in a private screening tonight, and most people were in tears. Sarah Gavron and Monica Ali the novelist both spoke about the crazy media coverage. The film has been covered by the papers in a dishonest fashion, so alarming that Prince Charles pulled out of attending the premiere. This film is the story of a woman trapped in her life, trapped in her culture, and trapped in an arranged marriage. In the beginning her husband seems to be something of monster, but by the end of the film we see that despite all of his failings, he is a truly noble character. The incredible irony is that Tannishtha Chatterjee, who by her astonishing ability and delicate sensitivity has done more to explain Muslim women to us than anyone I can think of, is herself a Hindu from West Bengal. When I told Monica Ali afterwards that this film would do more for cross-cultural understanding than anything else, she was pleased but looked doubtful. After all, the lives of the people making the film were threatened by a small minority of fanatics ('five men in a sweet shop in Brick Lane' was how it started, growing to seventy malcontents) when they were filming on location in London, and there is a false and hypocritical media storm raging around the film at the moment. It makes a good cheap headline. But we need to forget about all of that and concentrate on what this film really is: a human document of such raw honesty and true feeling that it is like a cry from the hearts of all who have suffered at any time and in any place in our troubled world. People talk about 'understanding', but how are we to achieve it? By making and viewing such films as this, I would suggest. And then there is the endless problem of women being oppressed. If you are not a woman and want to know what that is like, just watch this. The saddest thing of all is the collapse of dreams, and the story is about how the different characters bear the respective collapses of their most cherished ones and try to go on, and do.

So many British films are costume dramas or gangster movies that it's a real pleasure to see a work that focuses on the modern and very real challenges of an immigrant community. Where "East Is East" dealt with a Pakistani family and "Bend It Like Beckham" had an Indian focus, "Brick Lane" - based on the Booker-nominated novel by Monica Ali - addresses the life of a teenage girl from a village in Bangladesh (scenes actually shot in a beautiful-looking India) who is married off to a much older compatriot living in the eponymous area of east London.

So much is fresh and feminine here: most of the roles are for women and newcomer Tannishta Chatterjee, as the central character Nazneen, is excellent, often conveying so much simply with her eyes; Sarah Gavron is assured in her first directing role; the writing credits go to Ali herself and two other women; while the original score comes from Jocelyn Pook and the haunting singing from Natacha Atlas. This is a measured and intimate work that is more about different types of love and religion than it is about the Bangaleshi community itself.

A story simply told, often told, can be an affirmation of our shared humanity. And so it is with Brick Lane, about a Muslim immigrant woman, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatteriee), coming to East London in the early 1980's. Her repression as a housewife is the stuff of cultural cliché and also occasionally boring as we endure her silence in the face of a narrow minded businessman husband.

A beautiful but cloistered young wife may stray if her husband is loutish enough, and Nazeen's qualifies (Salish Kaushik). The rewarding part of the film comes with how the devout Nazeen deals with her sin and how the writers (Abi Morgan, Laura Jones) deliver a credible denouement. That ending is a bit of a twist but satisfactory.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan has successful color and composition, almost too beautiful for the side of London I go to when I need slice-o-life experience. Credit or blame is awarded to young helmer Sarah Gavron for the painterly shots. Kitchen sink this is not, nor does it have the gritty insights and colorful characters of a Mike Leigh film such as Secrets and Lies. But it does put you in touch with the challenges of a beautiful woman in a culture where men are all that count.

In the future, more films will deal with the emergence of talented women overcoming the restrictions their cultures and religions have placed on them. If the films are as honest as Brick Lane, progress will tear down the brick wall of prejudice but not without doubts and not without a nod to the goodness tradition has offered as well. That ambivalence is at the center this subtly ambitious film.

As I started watching Brick Lane my heart soared. The beauty of its appreciation of nature (Bangladeshi scenes from the lead character's memory) reminded me of the masterpieces of Deepa Mehta if not of Satyajit Ray. It tells of a young girl whose father marries her off to an educated Bangladeshi back in London. Displaced from her homeland, her heart is full of secret sorrow until she finds herself attracted to a man younger than her husband and much closer to her own age. From that point she begins much soul searching, examining her own identity and place in the world.

"For us," says director Sarah Gavron, "'Brick Lane' as a title symbolises a sanctuary to successive waves of immigrants searching for home. That search, rather than the bricks and mortar of the street, is at the heart of the story." I admit that her description helps me to have a better view of the film but I wish it had been more apparent in the footage.

A beautiful love story develops, with a subplot about resisting Islamic extremism. Yet I soon felt as if I were watching a kind of updated Jane Austen novel where the Brick Lane (East London) Bangladeshi community were used simply to provide a fresh plot device.

I read some of the adverse comments from Brick Lane spokespeople that plagued the film's opening. I didn't feel I could relate to them. I found nothing offensive in the film. Except it seemed to me somehow a curiously British portrayal of Bangladeshis. There is plenty of reference to Bangladeshi or Muslim issues but authenticity seems a little uneven. Translation of a prayer is touching. But a reference to the Muslims that died in Partition (at the end of colonial rule) seems less heartfelt. The young daughter, who has only ever known British ways, is a very convincing character on the other hand. I am tempted to wish that the original prize-winning writer had focused her efforts more on the daughter, someone much closer to her own diaspora experience.

As a film it succeeds. Exquisite photography and bundles of unarticulated emotion sweep us along at a heady pace. As a glimpse of another culture it is on less secure ground. The people claiming it misrepresented them may not have been statistically significant but why did it stir up so much trouble? Consider this. When Gurinder Chadha made Bride and Prejudice, she focused on the positive qualities of the two protagonists and cultures (India and America). When Deepa Meetha made Water, she focused on the positive strengths of the women on whose behalf the film was (in part) a protest. Sarah Gavron's heroine in Brick Lane, on the other hand, is almost an entirely a passive recipient of circumstance. We suspect she is a lovely person, but it needs more than some idyllic childhood memories of running through paddy fields to pinpoint the beauty within her. Much as the director's comment gives a higher purpose and reading to the film, it is not so obvious from viewing alone. Her comment about a sanctuary is a very spiritual one - perhaps even capable of uniting Muslims and Jews one day. But although her protagonist's husband does make reference to it at a Muslim meeting it could too easily be missed. Sadly, but not surprisingly, some audiences have reacted to the extremely personal (but more negative) images of her trapped and isolated woman.

For a film with a serious intent, Brick Lane stops short at quality entertainment. Compare Mira Nair's epic The Namesake, which asks questions about identity and answers them. Or the way Satyajit Ray looks at home and identity through simple observation If Sarah Gavron had wanted to accomplish anything as grand as the search for sanctuary in a foreign land, her scope needed to be more ambitious.