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Raves Greet My Son the Fanatic in America

Arthur J Pais

More than a year ago, British-Indian director Udayan Prasad's Brothers in Trouble played in half-a-dozen American cities. The movie received good reviews but went almost unnoticed.

But My Son the Fanatic, now showing in New York and Los Angeles, is getting a far bigger exposure as its distributor Miramax Films is determined to make it an Oscar contender and a box-office success. The strong reviews it has received will enable Miramax to take the film to more than 25 cities across the country.

Brothers in Trouble was shown at the Film Forum, a New York movie house that attracts only the seriously committed moviegoers. But at Lincoln Center and another more accessible movie house in New York, My Son...stands a better chance of attracting a bigger audience.

The movie is also garnering stronger reviews than Prasad's previous film. It is winning praise for its study of displaced immigrants, racial issues and appeal of fundamentalism for the young. In New York, the four major dailies gave the film enthusiastic thumbs up. The Daily News and New York Post each gave the film three stars out of four; Newsday gave three-and-a-half stars. And USA Today, offering another solid review, gave it three stars.

Om Puri's performance has been singled out by every reviewer, with Daily News asserting, "This is a wrenching, absolutely honest performance, the best we may see on an American screen this year."

"At its center is a fine, irascible performance by Om Puri, the prominent Indian actor who is on his way to being much more visible to international audiences," wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times.

(In addition to this film, he stars hilariously in the version of East Is East shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival, she added.)

Maslin added: "Mr Puri plays Parvez wonderfully, giving him the troubled complexity and quirky delivery that this story requires. ('Please, sir, no smoking indoors. Smell is deafening.') As based by Mr Kureishi on one of his short stories, it's essentially a close look at one man's realization that his routine, dutiful life no longer works. And it manages to set up political, moral and familial crises around Parvez to illustrate the point."

"As the lonely cab driver Parvez whose young son has begun rebelling against Western tradition and started embracing fundamentalist Islam, Om Puri has to carry most of the film's scenes.

"And Mr Puri makes Parvez the film's center through sheer force of personality," wrote Maslin, "though Mr Kureishi also gives him the film's sharpest lines. "You are so patriotic about Pakistan," he tells a fundamentalist religious leader who is becoming entrenched in England. "It's always a sign of imminent departure."

My Son Restores Your Faith in Films, was the headline for a review by Jack Mathews in Daily News. Calling the film "emotionally potent", the reviewer said neither Kureishi nor the director Prasad "loses sight of the real interest, which is Parvez's own political awakening".

"He's an immigrant chasing what we call the American Dream," Mathews continued, "even if he has to stand on his toes to see over the gutter.

"Parvez is a difficult role and Puri, a veteran Indian actor occasionally called upon by Hollywood to play swarthy supporting characters (in Mike Nichols's Wolf), is more than up to it."

Though Gene Seymour of Newsday gave the movie three-and-a-half stars, the reviewer faulted Prasad for often slipping "into the visually cramped pace of made-for-TV melodrama.

My Son... attains its stature from Puri's performance which "brings a warm center of gravity to the movie," she wrote.

She also praised the movie for "Puri's crusty, touching resilience and Kureishi's brilliant dialogue".

EARLIER FEATURE:
Om Puri's Double Impact

Previous story: Prasad Examines Global Issues Through A Humble Man

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