‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ seeks to illuminate not inflame, says director

TORONTO – Nearly 12 years after the horrific events of 9/11, acclaimed director Mira Nair says she’s still waiting for the Western world to have a real conversation about the impact of that day.

Disappointed by “hot-blooded political theories” that reduced swaths of people to “the good guys or the bad guy,” the Indo-American filmmaker says she hopes her provocative new movie offers much-needed context.

“In these last 12 years, in all the stuff that we have seen after 9/11 in terms of the movies, in terms of the media, in terms of the spin and the writing, I tell you it’s not a conversation — it’s a monologue,” Nair says in a recent promotional stop in Toronto.

“It’s one point of view in which you will never hear the other side of the story. You will always see these amazing stories of American soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan and here and there but you will never see who they impact there…. We need to recognize that in the other side of the world are human beings, just like who we are. But we don’t know them.”

Nair says her globe-trotting drama “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” was very much about creating “that bridge.”

Based on Mohsin Hamid’s bestselling novel of the same name, the film stars Riz Ahmed as the charmed Changez, a Princeton-educated Pakistani man who joins a prestigious financial-analysis firm in New York and soon rises through the corporate echelons under the guidance of his demanding boss, played by Kiefer Sutherland.

Changez has a slick apartment, healthy salary and falls in love with a beautiful artist, played by Kate Hudson. He seems to be living the American Dream, and he revels in it, until the Sept. 11 attacks shake his worldview irrevocably.

As in the book, he recounts his own story largely through flashbacks to a U.S. journalist, Bobby Lincoln. But while the book was a monologue, Bobby gets his own story arc here, brought to life by Liev Schreiber.

The themes of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” could only be explored with more than a decade of hindsight, says Nair.

“The film is really about fundamentalism and not fundamentalism as we understand it only to do with religion or terror, but more importantly in our film it’s about the fundamentalism of money and the collapse of this capitalist dream that we’ve seen, the financial collapse,” says Nair, who was born in Bhubaneswar, India but has split her home between India and New York for decades.

“It’s that examination of the fundamentals that Changez understands — that in both the economics and in religion or terror, the industry of both these places is about the individual being subservient to the system. It’s not about the human being. It’s a belief system in which the human being does not matter but profit does.”

The film includes footage of the towers being struck, with the lens focusing on Changez’s unexpected reaction.

Nair says the film doesn’t mean to celebrate his momentary swell of admiration: “It’s basically saying: Look, the world is a complicated place and there are many reactions to one thing.”

“At that moment he doesn’t think of the destruction that it might have caused and of course when that sinks in it’s a different story,” she says.

“We kind of wanted to reflect all facets of the complexity of many people’s reactions to the Twin Towers. But of course we tried to deal with it with great nuance and great delicacy but we also contextualize it in the film more so than in the book, perhaps.”

Given the tough themes, she describes this as “the hardest film” she’s ever made because it was difficult to raise funds.

“Investors came and investors went. This movie started twice and collapsed twice,” she notes.

“One English financier said to my producer that he’d give us $2 million,” Nair adds, noting it was a pittance of what they were asking.

“He said, ‘Well you can shoot it in (New York’s) Rockaway Beach, darling, but as long as you have a Muslim at the centre of it, that’s all you’re worth.'”

Nair, whose “Salaam Bombay” won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1988 and “Monsoon Wedding” won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2001, eventually found backing from the Doha Film Institute.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the 55-year-old director was attending the Toronto International Film Festival. She recalls worrying over her husband and son who were in New York, slated to get on a plane to join her later that day.

When she eventually reunited with them in New York, she found a distinct shift in the way society viewed “people like me.”

“New York City, which has been our home, my home for many years … people who look like us were kind of given the vibe of being ‘the other.’ Definitely a sense of being observed, definitely a sense of being just on a tight rope of sorts.”

Nair says she hopes her film — which is mostly in English and some Urdu with English subtitles — can be illuminating for audiences.

“People are so hungry, I think, to see another point of view, to see a world that is more global, that is more holistic rather than just one way of looking.”

“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” opens Friday in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The film expands to other cities throughout the spring and summer.