The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Movie
Original title The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Country of production United States , Pakistan
original language English , Urdu
Publishing year 2012
length 130 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Mira Nair
script Mohsin Hamid ,
Ami Boghani ,
William Wheeler
production Lydia Dean Pilcher
music Michael Andrews
camera Declan Quinn
cut Shimit Amin
occupation
synchronization

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a political thriller and drama from 2012. Directed by Mira Nair , the screenplay was written by Mohsin Hamid , among others , who also wrote the novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (German: The fundamentalist who nobody wanted to be ). The main characters are Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson . The film describes the path of a young Pakistani who, in search of his identity and his true beliefs, evolves from a Princeton graduate and analyst on Wall Street to a fundamentalist university professor in Lahore.

The film opened the 69th Venice International Film Festival in 2012 .

action

The film begins with a look at the family of young Professor Changez ( Riz Ahmed ) while they are at a traditional festival in Lahore . At the same time, the kidnapping of Anse Rainier ( Gary Richardson ), a US professor at the University of Lahore, takes place. The next day, the kidnappers broadcast a videotape demanding the release of hundreds of Muslim prisoners from a detention center and € 700,000 for the children of Waziristan to release Professor Rainier from hostage. An American journalist, Bobby Lincoln ( Liev Schreiber ), meets for an interview with Professor Changez in a café near the University of Lahore. Bobby says he is preparing an article on Pakistan's new militant academy. When asked if he was one of them, Changez asks him back if he would be willing to hear the whole story. (Film quote: " Are you ready to hear the whole story, from the beginning, not only bits and pieces? - Looks can be deceiving. I am a lover of America. ")

Changez tells Bobby Lincoln his résumé in retrospect. As the son of a famous Punjab poet and poet ( Om Puri ) and his wife ( Shabana Azmi ), the young Changez lives a reasonably privileged life in Lahore. While his brother and sister walk on musical paths, Changez seeks success, in other words big money. He wins a scholarship at Princeton University. Later, because he showed how to combine long-term development and short-term profit, he got a trainee position at a management consultancy, Underwood Samson, on Wall Street. At a picnic in Central Park, shortly after starting his job, he meets the photographer Erica ( Kate Hudson ).

His career is developing. Changez becomes an expert when it comes to downsizing, optimizing efficiency and breaking up companies, much to the delight of his boss Jim Cross ( Kiefer Sutherland ). Erica surprisingly turns out to be the niece of one of the company's partners, Maxwell Underwood. Changez and Erica, who leads a bohemian life in New York , get to know each other better and become a couple. However, Erica cannot open herself completely because she suffers greatly from the loss of her great love, Chris; the man had died a few months before she met Changez.

When the towers of the World Trade Center collapse due to an attack , Changez is on a business trip to Manila . On his return he is automatically suspected because of his name and is treated accordingly by the US customs authorities. Changez is reminded that he is obviously only a tolerated guest in the US, his doubts about Wall Street's road to success begin. The relationship with Erica treads on the spot as she still cannot emotionally break away from her deceased boyfriend.

When Changez rated a publisher as “ to be liquidated ” as part of a corporate evaluation in Istanbul , he met the old publisher. In a café conversation with him about the value of things, Changez's doubts increase as to whether he is on the right track and which masters he is serving. It turns out that this publisher published his father's poems in an anthology in Turkish. Changez struggles with himself, Jim Cross drives him. On the morning of the decision on the publisher Changez announced. Jim Cross is beside himself - Changez looks into the face of the fundamentally dominant market and turns away.

In various sections between the journalist Bobby Lincoln as emerges CIA - undercover agent . It also shows that Changez knows or at least suspects this. On the roof of the café, where the conversation between the two of them continues, Changez tries to fathom Bobby's path between cultures. In a worsening situation of kidnapping, the two develop a new level of tense trust. The CIA is on site with a task force and is urgently waiting for Bobby's signal. It is feared that Rainier is long dead and Changez is behind it all.

After resigning from Underwood Samson, Changez moved to Lahore, where he began teaching economics at university as well as campaigning against the United States. His own dissatisfaction piqued the interest of al-Qaeda members. But when they ask him if they can hide certain “material” in his university rooms, he sees the face of fundamentalism again and says no. He remains an active critic of the US and because of that, he and his family run into problems.

The situation is also getting worse because of the protesting students. The CIA wants to intervene and puts pressure on Bobby Lincoln. Changez reveals that despite his critical stance on the US, he failed al-Qaeda, Bobby admits that Professor Rainier was a long-time CIA official and his recruiting officer. When the situation around the university café, which is also a center of anti-American protests, escalates, Changez gives Bobby a tip as to where Rainier could be hiding.

Bobby watches Changez sending a text message and suspects that Changez is playing twice. When Bobby from the CIA hears that Rainier is already dead, risking his life, he pulls Changez onto the street in front of the café, where hundreds of protesting students have already gathered, the CIA task force decides to strike and drives towards the café forecourt. Changez tries to calm the masses down, in an inconspicuous moment Bobby shoots Sameer, one of Changez's militant students. After Bobby is dragged into a getaway car by the CIA team, he learns that Rainier was murdered that morning. The text message Bobby reads on the cell phone that he snatched from Changez had gone to his sister.

Changez gives a funeral speech for Sameer, warning of peace. Meanwhile, Bobby is recovering in a US military hospital. He listens to the tape of the interview and smiles when he hears Changez saying: “ Are you ready to hear the whole story, from the very beginning, not only bits and pieces? - Looks can be deceiving. I am a lover of America. ”

synchronization

The synchronization was produced by Scalamedia in Munich. Dialogue script and dialogue direction were with Kai Taschner .

role actor speaker
Changez Riz Ahmed Patrick Schröder
Erica Kate Hudson Stephanie waiter
Bobby Lincoln Liev Schreiber Tobias Kluckert
Jim Cross Kiefer Sutherland Tobias Master
Abu Om Puri Ekkehardt Belle
Ammi Shabana Azmi Dagmar Dempe
Ludlow Cooper Martin Donovan Crock Krumbiegel
Wainwright Nelsan Ellis Torben Liebrecht
Kemal Haluk Bilginer Leon Rainer
Maxwell Underwood Victor Slezak Hans-Georg Panczak

Reviews

Christina Nord from the taz misses the necessary complexity, finds many elements of the film too "ostentatious". She thinks that the bluntly formulated “Reject the dichotomous logic of 'us vs. them '! ”deprives the film of any painful opportunity for insight. Jan Schulz-Ojala from Tagesspiegel is touched, also by the philosophical punch line: “Anyone who has sworn off one absolute truth can no longer be sworn in to another. The humanistic happy ending, however, is too good to be likely - but probably the voluptuous temperament of Mira Nair intoxicated mind as well as at the arg clear construction of a terrorist origin "For Isabel Reichert from the Austrian. Standard are the conversations that Changez and Lead Bobby, more complex than the character development of Mira Nair. Similar to Christina Nord, her, however wonderfully empathic, music is applied too thickly and everything is much too striking.

For Peter Zander from Der Welt , the film tells “the story of a well-integrated person who becomes an Islamist.” For him, it is a film that cannot be avoided because “it deals with a topic that has traumatized the whole world "And because" it guarantees large, epic images from several countries, even if their permanent postcard gloss in the story of radicalization seems increasingly artful and stale. "Anke Westphal from the Berliner Zeitung is downright dismayed at" how convincing Changez 'separation from the western one is Culture experienced as liberation. The young man throws it all away, leaves it behind: the mask-like, self-arrogance, xenophobia. And since he never again wants to decide from a distance about the fate of people completely unknown to him, as he did as an analyst, it goes without saying that he does not join the mujahideen, terror and al-Qaida either. ”Also Frederic Jäger from critic .de finds that Mira Nair does not redeem in the implementation the return to complexity that she herself demands with the subject of the film.

And for Peter Claus on getidan.de, too, “the connection of the very personal story of a man under the spell of world history with the events of the latter seems too constructed and naive to have a greater emotional or spiritual effect.” Nevertheless, he finds it Attempt honestly to try “to tell in a massively effective way and to shed light on pressing problems of coexistence or at least the coexistence of various religious and ideological possibilities”. For Maximillian Schröter, who saw the film at the Munich Film Festival in 2013, The Reluctant Fundamentalist's strengths are “on the one hand that the film asks many questions, but doesn't answer all of them, but leaves the viewer to their own opinion to the events and the actions of the characters. "

Awards

Mira Nair was awarded the Peace Prize of German Films for The Reluctant Fundamentalist in 2013 . The jury justified its decisions as follows: “Mira Nair dares to look inside a young man on his way to becoming a fundamentalist against his will. Nair's film builds the irritating bridge between Anglo-American market laws and Koran-abusing fundamentalism. The fact that Mira Nair, as a native Indian, shot her film in Pakistan, which has been hostile to independence and separation, is another bridge across cultural, ideological and religious divides and borders. ”The main actor Riz Ahmed won the Best Actor Award at the same film festival. In November 2012, the film won the Centenary Award of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) .

reception

The film did not have a huge box office hit. With a production cost of $ 15 million, he only made 2 million.

swell

  1. ↑ 69th Venice International Film Festival, Screenings Schedule October 29, 2012 at labiennale.org (accessed October 20, 2012).
  2. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Days of Anger. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .
  3. ↑ taz, August 30, 2012
  4. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel, August 30, 2012
  5. ↑ Der Standard, August 29, 2012
  6. ↑ Die Welt, August 29, 2012
  7. ↑ Berliner Zeitung, August 29, 2012
  8. ↑ the critic.de, August 29, 2012
  9. ↑ getidan.de, September 9, 2012
  10. ↑ filmszene.de, accessed on October 20, 2013
  11. ^ BR report on the award ceremony , here as wayback archive ( memento from October 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), (accessed on October 20, 2013)
  12. ^ Peace Prize for Mira Nair , Mittelbayerische Zeitung of July 5, 2013
  13. ↑ cf. 43rd IFFI 2012 Awards ( memento of October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed October 20, 2013.
  14. ↑ James Lamont: Indian director Mira Nair on 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' . Financial Times, May 9, 2013. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  15. ^ The Reluctant Fundamentalist ( Memento July 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Boxoffice. Retrieved October 20, 2013.

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