Worksheet Screening Meera Nair's " The Reluctant Fundamentalist"
This blog task is given by Dilip Barad Sir, Teacher's Link
Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel, is more than a post-9/11 thriller—it is a meditation on empire, hybridity, and the uneasy negotiations between selfhood and global power structures. Approaching the film through the lens of Ania Loomba’s reflections on the “New American Empire” and Hardt & Negri’s Empire, this blog traces my journey through pre-watching theory, active viewing, and post-screening reflection. It is both an academic engagement and a personal reckoning with how globalization, suspicion, and cross-cultural contact play out in narrative and cinematic form.
Pre-Watching: Entering the Frame
Reading the World Before the Film
Loomba reminds us that in today’s global order, imperial power doesn’t just flow from a single “center” to a “margin”—it’s everywhere: in our brands, our newsfeeds, our languages. Hardt & Negri call this Empire, a networked sovereignty without a single capital city, where both Wall Street and a village market are part of the same global circuitry.
For Changez, the protagonist, life is lived inside these overlapping networks. He is never purely “in” or “out” of the West. Princeton, Lahore, and Istanbul are all sites of both inclusion and exclusion. Post-9/11 geopolitics doesn’t just challenge him—it forces him to see that empire isn’t just an abstract theory. It’s in the airport pat-down, in the suspicious glance from a stranger, and in the way his worth is calculated in corporate terms.
The Story Before and After 9/11
Hamid began his novel before 9/11, envisioning a more intimate meditation on ambition and belonging. But the attacks changed everything—not just for global politics, but for the novel’s urgency. The manuscript, once a personal story, became political by necessity.
This shift matters because The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a bridge between two moods: the pre-9/11 optimism of borderless careers and the post-9/11 suspicion that makes every crossing an act of interrogation. It captures a world where global mobility and global mistrust grow together, hand in hand.
While-Watching: Reading the Screen
The Pull of Generations
Changez’s father, a poet in Lahore, embodies a value system grounded in art, heritage, and measured skepticism toward materialism. In contrast, Changez’s early corporate career with Underwood Samson is all speed, precision, and profit. Nair makes this clash visual: the father’s world is textured—warm tones, cluttered bookshelves—while corporate America is cold, minimalist, all sharp lines and neutral palettes.
Love and Distance
Changez and Erica’s romance is tender yet fractured. She never fully sees him as himself—her gaze is clouded by grief for her lost lover, Chris. It’s a microcosm of America’s relationship with “the Other”: always through the lens of its own loss. Nair’s use of Erica’s fragmented memories—ghostlike overlays, sudden fades—turns emotional estrangement into a visual language.
Profit versus Culture
The Istanbul sequence stands out. Changez appraises a publishing house, valuing centuries-old manuscripts in purely monetary terms. But the scene’s mise-en-scène—dust motes, aged paper, slow camera pans—argues against his cold calculations. This is where the profit motive and the cultural archive lock eyes.
The Weight of the Title
“Fundamentalist” here is not just about religion. Underwood Samson’s creed—“focus on the fundamentals”—is its own kind of extremism: profit over people, efficiency over empathy. Changez’s reluctance is visible in pauses, in the way his jaw sets, in the hesitation before he speaks. It’s a reluctance toward both militant absolutism and the corporate variety.
Empire in the Everyday
Post-9/11 paranoia isn’t just shouted—it’s whispered in the background hum of daily life. Airport detentions, colleagues’ subtle distance, strangers’ suspicion—these are the empire’s quietest weapons. Nair’s ambiguous spaces—shadowed streets, smoky cafés, in-between corridors—become sites where we’re never quite sure who’s the watcher and who’s being watched.
Post-Watching: Thinking Beyond the Frame
Room for Reconciliation?
In discussion, opinions split. Some felt Nair’s film builds a fragile bridge between East and West through moments of dialogue and recognition. Others thought it still leaned on stereotypes—especially with the addition of the hostage subplot, which the novel never had. For me, this change made the film more suspenseful but reduced the slow-burn ambiguity that Hamid had so carefully crafted.
Postcolonial Theory in Action
Hybridity & Third Space: Changez isn’t abandoning Lahore for New York; he’s inhabiting both—until the political climate pushes him toward choosing.
Orientalism & Re-Orientalism: Western media frames him through orientalist lenses. Later, he occasionally adopts an “authentic” Eastern posture as strategic resistance.
Cinematography: Reflections, glass panes, and doubled images keep reminding us of split selves.
Adaptation Choices: The shift from a single-perspective monologue to a multi-thread thriller changes how we engage—moving from active interpretation to guided suspense.
Looking Inward
Watching The Reluctant Fundamentalist made me reflect on my own position as a viewer from outside the U.S. I wasn’t surprised by the way identity can be flattened by fear—but the film sharpened my awareness of how quickly that flattening happens. Loomba, Hardt, and Negri helped me see that empire isn’t only about military or markets; it’s also about stories—who tells them, who gets to be complex, and who is reduced to a headline.
Conclusion
In the end, The Reluctant Fundamentalist refuses to be just a romance, a thriller, or a political statement. It’s all three, tangled in a knot of shifting loyalties and gazes. Nair’s adaptation doesn’t resolve that knot—it lets us sit with it, question it, and perhaps recognize that in our own ways, we too are negotiating the fundamentals.
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