Movie- Brick Lane

Brick Lane (2007) is a chronicle of a Bangladeshi woman's journey---from her home country to America, and eventually, from a quiet servant of her husband to a fully realized woman and human being.

It is a quiet movie, with no seemingly huge moments, but all the small moments add up together into change for Nazneem (Tannishtha Chatterjee). She is married in an arranged marriage and shipped to her much older husband in the U.S. She gives him two children and stays subservient to him...all the while longing to be reunited with her sister in Bangladesh.

But things start to change as he does not get promotions, and her dreams of meeting her sister dim. She takes work, sewing that she can do at home. Her passionless marriage feels more and more confining, and after much indecision, takes a younger man as a lover.

But this is not about finding herself in another man. Nazneem rejects that option too. She chooses finally to find herself as a woman, mother and as an person who can make her own decisions.

Brick Lane is a nice movie. It does not always go with the conventional, and I liked that. Chatterjee plays Nanzeem magnificently. She is quietly perfect. The performance and the film are not flashy, nor does the film go for gimmicks. This really is a movie about change--- profound change. And it works well.