‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ will spur a dialogue: Mira Nair
Acclaimed Indian director Mira Nair is hopeful that her new thriller “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” would spur a dialogue between two worlds depicted in it particularly in the context of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Based on the novel of the same name by Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid, the film tells the story of two conflicting ideologies – the “fundamentalism” of the capitalists and that of the terrorists – through a young Pakistani man chasing his American Dream.
The film “not only gave me the opportunity to make that modern tale on Pakistan, but it was also in its bones a dialogue with America,” Nair told IANS in a phone interview from New York.
“There is so little of conversation between this part of the world and that part of the world and especially post 9/11 that conversation has become a monologue,” she said.
She saw in “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” a “chance to create a bridge, create a dialogue.”
Nair said she has tried “to make a film that questions who is the other or who do we make to feel like the other and make something that’s not reductionist”, where one is either a good guy or a bad guy and things are black or white.
In a complicated world “we are many things. Not just one thing – not just Indian or American or just this or that, but we are a combination of so many identities especially in this globalising world,” she said.
