Brick Lane		Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
June 2003 saw the release of Monica Ali’s novel, Brick Lane, aptly titled after the real ‘Brick Lane in the heart of London’s Bangladesh community.  When the book first came out, it was well received and even made the short list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.  However, the positive reception wasn’t shared by the actual residents of Brick Lane.  Britain’s Bangladeshi community was up in arms over Ali’s book, which they perceived to be a negative portrayal of them.  Needless to say, they were still pretty irked when screenwriters Abi Morgan and Laura Jones decided to adapt Brick Lane the novel into Brick Lane the movie.  So, when director Sarah Gavon and her crew arrived in Tower Hamlets (on the real Brick Lane) in June 2006 to shoot the film, the residents ended up staging a protest, forcing the crew to shoot elsewhere.  Why were they so upset?  The real residents of Brick Lane felt that Ali’s story chronicling the fictitious life of a Bangladeshi woman named Nanzeen made the community appear “uneducated and unsophisticated” because the main character’s voice was “imposed on her by a middle class comfortable Oxford educated outsider who has never lived anywhere remotely resembling Brick Lane.”
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics			The film starts with Nazneen’s mother committing suicide when Nazneen (Tannishta Chatterjee) is 14 years old.  When she is 17, her father arranges for her to marry Chanu (Satish Kaushik), a man twice her age, who takes her to live in East London.  Sixteen years and 2 daughters later, Nazneen has learned to accept her fate of being trapped in a loveless marriage.
At first, the only bright spot in Nazneen’s dull life are the letters she receives from her sister living back in Bangladesh that are filled with tales of romance – a far cry from Nazneen’s perfunctory marriage to her pompous oaf of a husband.  One day, Razia (Yarvey Virdi), a new resident to Brick Lane, gives Nazneen one of her old sewing machines so Nazneen can join Razia in sewing clothes for manufacturers to bring in some extra money.  That’s when Karim (Christopher Simpson), the young, attractive man who brings material for sewing jobs, enters Nazneen’s isolated world of domestic drudgery.  Despite their 17 year age difference, one thing leads to another, and well…you can imagine where things go from there.  Obviously, Nazneen’s journey is a spiritual one.  She is faced with choosing between romance and commitment, between London and Bangladesh, and whether she will continue to lie down and accept her “fate” or stand up and fight for what she really wants.  Needless to say, that’s a lot to digest in such a short time span; but, that’s what happens when you whittle down a 500 page novel into a two hour film.  Unfortunately, Morgan and Jones also thought they could squish the novel’s 16 year time span by having everything in the film take place within a single year.  Yet, in doing so, they make it hard for us to understand how Nazneen has managed to go 16 years without addressing anything she suddenly accomplishes in a single year of her life – like make friends.
Another problem created by the time crunch in the adaptation from book to film is how it makes the emotional depth of these characters feel like they got lost somewhere in the translation.  Because everything is condensed into the span of a year, the film comes across as a series of dramatic moments without any explanation as to why they’re so damn important.				Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
When Nazneen physically collapses after an argument with Chanu over her sister’s letters, I literally sat there scratching my head in confusion, wondering what in the hell just happened.  Only after reading the press notes did I finally realize that Chanu had made Nazneen realize that she was the one who had been romanticizing the letters, which caused her to have a nervous breakdown.  That’s when the irony of the situation led me to my own epiphany.  I found myself questioning whether or not London’s real Bangladeshi community was only protesting Monica Ali’s view of Brick Lane because Ali didn’t share their own romanticized view of themselves.  It’s a definite possibility.  No one likes to see themselves portrayed in a “negative” light.  Go back to the protest.  According to the BBC news report, “everything seemed orderly enough until a young Asian man stepped forward to ask if anyone had actually read the book.”[1] As it turned out, not many of them had.  Most of the Brick Lane residents had only read “bits and pieces…while having other sections explained to them by others.”[2]  Now the question becomes:  If only a few of them have actually read the book, how are we supposed to know if the negative consensus is a general one, or just the opinion of a few people?  Furthermore, since the filmmakers were so concerned with not offending the Bangladeshi community, how do we know they didn’t overly romanticize the cinematic portrayal, also making it unrealistic?
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics			We don’t know, and that’s the point.  Because everything is subjective, what audiences are willing to overlook or not overlook (as the case may be) is entirely up to them.  Like one passer-by said, “all the protest did was make me want to read the book and watch the film.”  Looks like no press is bad press after all.  © Kelly Bartley 2008
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5229872.stm 2 Ibid.
Release Date:	June 20, 2008 (NY/LA), July 11, 2008 (limited)
Running Time:	1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating:	PG-13 (some sexuality & brief strong language)
Distributor:	Sony Pictures Classics