Screening Film Adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

   

This task as a part of film Screening assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, for information about task Click here.

Title: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Director: Mira Nair

Release year: 2012 

The film is a post-9/11 story about the impact of the terrorist attacks on one Pakistani man and his treatment by Americans in reaction to them.

Pre-Watching Activities

1.Critical Reading & Reflection

Ania Loomba’s concept of the "New American Empire" situates global power not solely within nation-states, but across a network of multinational corporations, military alliances, and transnational institutions. Hardt and Negri’s Empire extends this idea, arguing that in the postmodern world, the enemy is no longer another nation but a figure framed as a threat to the global order, often labeled as a “terrorist” or “criminal.” This framework is essential for understanding The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where Changez transitions from being an insider in the structures of global power to a suspect outsider.

In the film, the U.S. is portrayed as part of a broader global system that surveils and disciplines perceived threats worldwide. Changez’s employer, Underwood Samson, represents the corporate arm of Empire, where profit is the central value. Post-9/11, the film explores how the “enemy” becomes both banal and exaggerated. Changez’s strip search and FBI interrogation illustrate the systemic suspicion he faces, while his Pakistani identity becomes an unshakeable marker of difference.

Changez’s hybrid identity—educated in the U.S. but rooted in Pakistani values—embodies the tension of the “third space” (Bhabha), where cultural fusion leads to both attraction and alienation. Initially celebrated as a success story, Changez is reconfigured as a potential threat due to post-9/11 geopolitics. The tense interview with Bobby Lincoln captures the manipulation, mistrust, and negotiations characteristic of the global Empire.

Hardt and Negri describe Empire as a supranational order of power, where threats are internalized, and sovereignty is distributed across various global institutions. The Reluctant Fundamentalist illustrates how cultural, economic, and security regimes intersect, shaping Changez’s life through systems that seduce, surveil, and ultimately exclude him, capturing the essence of global Empire and its competing fundamentalist discourses.

2. Contextual Research

Mohsin Hamid began writing The Reluctant Fundamentalist before 9/11, initially focusing on themes like ambition, identity, and cultural negotiation. However, the 9/11 attacks significantly reshaped the global political climate, especially regarding Muslim identities in the West, which became marked by suspicion and surveillance. Hamid completed the novel after these events, allowing him to incorporate the global shift in perception directly into the narrative.

This shift is essential: Changez’s journey evolves from a personal story of ambition and love to a reflection on the fractured relationship between East and West. The novel’s dramatic monologue captures the post-9/11 uncertainty and paranoia, while the film visualizes this tension through framing and cross-cultural encounters.

Hamid has explained that the attacks altered the novel’s tone, structure, and the role of the central listener. Initially a critique of corporate life, the novel transformed into a meditation on suspicion, securitization, and racial profiling. This pre/post-9/11 split mirrors Changez’s own arc, moving from the allure of the "American Dream" to the harsh reality of surveillance and criminalization.

 While-Watching Activities

1. Character Conflicts & Themes

In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a generational divide is evident in the contrasting values of Changez and his father. His father, a poet in Lahore, upholds cultural and artistic traditions, prioritizing introspection and the significance of words over material success. Changez, on the other hand, initially embraces the corporate values of Underwood Samson, where efficiency, profit, and results dominate. This tension between cultural heritage and corporate modernity becomes clearer when Changez rediscovers his father's poetry in Istanbul, triggering his disillusionment with the profit-driven world he once admired.

The generational divide plays out in the contrast between his father’s non-materialistic worldview and Changez's initial immersion in corporate life, where everything is valued through financial metrics. The Istanbul sequence highlights this shift: a publishing house with cultural significance but little financial profit symbolizes the tension between preserving knowledge and adhering to a profit-centric system. Changez's decision to protect the publishing house marks his rejection of "profit fundamentalism" in favor of a defense of literary and cultural legacy—an ethical stance rooted both in his father’s influence and his own personal awakening.

Erica, on the other hand, represents a mix of personal connection and cultural alienation. Her unresolved grief over her deceased boyfriend and her appropriation of Changez’s personal experiences for her art reflect a form of re-orientalism, where his identity is consumed and objectified without true understanding.

The Istanbul scenes also serve as a metaphor for the clash between profit and cultural preservation. Changez's choice to safeguard the publishing house represents a break from reducing art and culture to mere financial commodities.

2. Title Significance & Dual Fundamentalism

The title's use of "reluctance" highlights Changez’s inner conflict regarding both violent extremism and corporate absolutism. The film draws a parallel between Islamic fundamentalism and the relentless pursuit of profit at Underwood Samson—both systems reduce the world to rigid, non-negotiable "fundamentals," stripping away nuance and human complexity. Changez ultimately rejects both, positioning himself in a morally ambiguous space outside of these opposing ideologies.

The film literalizes the novel’s play on the word “fundamentalism,” suggesting that it’s not only about religious zeal but also the corporate obsession with "fundamentals," encapsulated in US’s mantra to "focus on fundamentals." This parallel becomes explicit when Changez hears similar language from his boss and later from militants. The visual language of glass-walled offices, security checkpoints, prayer rugs, and boardrooms brings together two worlds—both of which reduce complex lives to simple metrics, whether profit or purity. Changez’s reluctance is shown in his moral struggle at pivotal moments: in Istanbul, where he begins to question his corporate role, and later in Lahore, when he rejects militant recruitment. He resists both forms of extremism.

3. Empire Narratives

The film’s visual language, shaped by surveillance shots, tense close-ups, and ever-changing urban landscapes, amplifies the atmosphere of paranoia and instability in the post-9/11 world. These stylistic choices reflect the anxiety and mistrust that define this era, where surveillance and security are omnipresent. The frequent use of surveillance angles—such as overhead shots or shots that isolate characters—mirrors the feeling of being constantly watched. Meanwhile, the close-ups of characters’ faces convey the internalized fear, confusion, and alienation they experience, emphasizing the emotional toll of living under such scrutiny.

Key spaces like the Lahore café and the protest-filled streets serve as physical embodiments of this ambiguity, operating as zones where motives are unclear and the line between truth and manipulation is blurred. In these spaces, interactions are laced with suspicion, and resistance, though present, is always undercut by the threat of violence or repression. These environments become symbolic of the moral and ideological grey areas that dominate the post-9/11 world, where ideological purity is pitted against pragmatic survival.The film’s portrayal of these spaces underscores the pervasive reach of power, where even personal and intimate acts are subject to larger systems of control.

Post-Watching Activities

1.Group Discussion 

The film creates moments for dialogue and potential reconciliation, particularly through the extended interview format, which serves as a platform for exchange between Changez and Bobby Lincoln. Yet, the tragic conclusion of the film underscores that mistrust remains deeply entrenched in the post-9/11 world, suggesting that true reconciliation is still elusive.

Changez’s character embodies both resistance and victimhood. His resistance is shown in his rejection of the exploitative systems of corporate America and his efforts to reclaim his identity, while his victimhood becomes evident through the racial profiling and surveillance he faces as a result of his ethnicity. This duality underscores the complexity of postcolonial identity, where resistance is not simply an external defiance but an internal, ethical refusal within the very structures of Empire.

Though Nair attempts to open spaces for dialogue—such as the long café conversation and Changez’s eulogy—the CIA subplot and kidnapping risk reinforcing the security-driven gaze the film critiques. The balance between reconciliation and stereotyping ultimately depends on whether viewers accept Changez’s testimony or default to the thriller’s demand for a clear antagonist.

By adapting the novel’s radical ambiguity into a clearer dialogue, the film sacrifices some indeterminacy. Still, techniques like cross-cutting and off-screen sound preserve a sense of uncertainty, maintaining tension over Changez’s true motivations. 

2. Analytical Essay (Condensed)

Through a postcolonial lens, the film can be seen as a negotiation of identity within the “third space,” where hybridity holds the potential for cultural exchange but also reveals underlying vulnerabilities. Orientalist and re-orientalist perspectives emerge in how characters like Erica, the media, and the CIA perceive Changez, reducing him to a symbolic representation of the East. The film visually emphasizes this divide through contrasting color schemes—warm tones in Lahore and cold, sterile palettes in New York—reinforcing cultural and ideological separation. The narrative resists simplistic binaries, showing that "Empire" is not solely maintained through military and economic power but also through cultural narratives that shape the way individuals are seen and understood.

3. Reflective Journal

Watching the film forces me to rethink my assumptions about the “War on Terror” and the individuals caught in-between cultural identities. It provides a deeper understanding of how postcolonial individuals navigate their sense of self under the weight of global Empire, where belonging and exclusion are constantly fluid and contested. Changez’s story reminds me that resistance isn’t always overt or dramatic; sometimes, it’s a quiet, intellectual process of reclaiming one’s own narrative from the systems that seek to define and control it.

Conclusion

The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a compelling exploration of identity, power, and resistance in a post-9/11 world, illustrating the complexities of hybridity and cultural tension under global Empire. The film highlights how surveillance, securitization, and ideological narratives shape perceptions, forcing individuals like Changez to navigate between belonging and exclusion. His dual role as both a victim and a figure of resistance emphasizes the quiet, intellectual nature of postcolonial resistance. Ultimately, the film challenges viewers to rethink assumptions about the “War on Terror” and the narratives that define identity, urging a deeper reflection on the forces shaping our world.

Thank You !!

Reference

The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Directed by Mira Nair. Doha film institute, Mirabai films, 2012.