Strong 'Brick Lane' deconstructs immigrants' woe

London-based story in the manner of Dickens explores Bangladeshi couple's path from arranged marriage to dead ends

By Michael Sragow

September 19, 2008

In conversation, "pathetic" has become a synonym for useless, but the strength of the movie Brick Lane, adapted from Monica Ali's novel, lies precisely in its comedy-streaked pathos. This London-based tale of a young Bangladeshi woman, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee), who begins to feel trapped in her arranged marriage to a decades-older man, Chanu (Satish Kaushik), lacks the stature we associate with tragedy or tragicomedy. But the movie has a vibrant, sturdy pathos in the manner of Dickens.

It evokes tears and laughter in its evocation of Bangladeshi tradition and modernism colliding in the streets of London. And in its portrait of a husband who painfully comes to know his limitations, the film achieves that rarest quality: nobility.

The director, Sarah Gavron, squeezes away some of the book's tumultuous life. But the main characters - especially Chanu - still connect to us emotionally.

Nazneen experiences marriage as a petty tyranny. She must do everything from service Chanu sexually to cut his corns. But if he is portly and bookish, he isn't by nature a tyrant, either. He thinks his role is to provide for his family and be the ultimate arbiter of household conduct and ambitions.

Constantly declaring that he's close to a promotion that doesn't come, Chanu might be a Bangladeshi Mr. Micawber(my favorite Dickens character) if his family shared or enjoyed his illusions. But his resistance to his teenage daughter's assimilation and to his wife's independence short-circuits whatever fondness they may feel for him. Nazneen starts working at home sewing blue jeans. She falls into an affair with Karim (Christopher Simpson), the young man who delivers the denim. Is this a personal awakening or an act of domestic rebellion? Director Gavron thrives on that ambiguity.

Chanu's evolution from a gasbag to a man who can speak from the dead center of his being is as stirring as it is heartbreaking. In the polarizing aftermath of Sept. 11, Karim helps form a militant Muslim group. Chanu, who remembers Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Bangladesh and Pakistan, disdains these "Bengal Tigers." He makes his signature statement when he declares that his religion resides in people's hearts, not in identity politics.

This movie shortchanges some major figures from the novel, but in Chanu, it creates an indelible protagonist. He thinks he is a man of ideas. He is a man who, when it counts, is full of common sense and uncommon feeling.

Brick Lane

( Sony Pictures Classics) Starring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson. Directed by Sarah Gavron. Rated PG-13 for some sexuality and brief strong language. Time 102 minutes.