Review - Brick Lane movie

Review – Brick Lane movie

I decided to do a review on a movie Brick Lane. This movie was directed by Sarah Gavron and this work is based on bestselling novel of the same name by Monica Ali and others. The book was first published in 2003 and the film went out 4 years later, in 2007. Authoress of the story is a Bangladeshi-born British writer and novelist. She is closely connected to this story, not only because she wrote it, but also because she has no specific home as the main character Nazneen. Ali has experienced a lot of success because of her work, for example when she was selected as one of the „Best of Young British Novelists“. In the movie you can see a beautiful Indian actress Tannishtha Chatterjee as a main character and the film was distributed both in the UK and internationally.

Brick Lane is a drama movie and it takes place at first in Bangladesh and later in London. The plot focused on a story about arranged marriage which we thought we already knew, but this movie shows us much more. The plot concerns a Bangladeshi girl, who had to marry a man, who she has never met, and had to live with him in London in a street named Brick Lane, which is a heart of Bangladeshi community. She was only 17 years old, when she married Chanu, who is not very good looking man and he is much older than her. But it is important to say, that he is not a hateful man. Now you may wonder what is the issue in this story. And this is so obvious, because after all, they are not in love. The film reaches a dramatic climax, when Nazneen, the Bangladeshi girl, actually fell in love. The main through of this movie is actually the concept of „home“, what it means for the main character and if is it possible to change it.

At first, when I saw this movie, I have to admit I was a little bit skeptical about it, because I am not very used to watch movies from a different culture. The cast was very unconvincing for me, because I didn’t know the actors, but they turned out to be really great. This movie is just something different which we are not used to watch. But from this movie we can easily see, that every country has different issues. In my opinion the script is very exciting and after I watched first 10 minutes of this movie and got used to it, I really enjoyed it. Also the story is very slow, but despite the film‘s lack of energy, all the characters and also the background is very watchfull. Somebody may consider this movie as a waste of time, because the story is slow and actually nothing big happens, but from my point of view the plot is mainly about Nazneen’s changes in her mind. During the story she is changing from completely passive woman without any emotions to the very opposite. Which was so interesting for me. What I liked about the movie the most was the fact, that it is not about love affair in general, but it is more about the marriage. It also shows, how Nazneen learned to live just for her children and for her husband, because she did not have any friends in London, and she actually learned how to like it. During watching the movie I felt everything with her and I felt really sorry for her. Because of this fact I think that this movie catches attention of women rather than men, because after all, the story is about woman’s emotional development and emotions play a big role in this film.