ltlacey Review of Brick Lane

Brick Lane (2007)

A woman from India is married off when she is young and moves to London to live with her much older husband.

[6/10 · 14 January 2009]

There are some books that should not be made into movies, and this is one of them. These are the books where there is very little physical action, but a lot is going on within a person's thoughts, what they feel, etc. That being said, it has been years since I read Brick Lane, but I do remember that I liked the book very much and I somehow recall that more went on in the book. Probably because we really got to know the main character. Her thoughts and feelings. But mostly how it felt to be taken away at such a young age, married off to someone she did not know, that who she was being married to was someone older than her own father, and that she had leave everything she had known to move to a new country and a new way of life. The movie did convey the basic premise of how, for a woman from this culture, one's life does not offer much. It is the same thing, day in and day out, and for the rest of her life. How depressing is that? She does find some solace, which of course causes a lot of guilt and anguish, but the movie does not dwell too long on that aspect. Much of the movie has very little physical action going on, and not much dialogue either, yet the actress who portrayed the main character managed to convey how unhappy she was with her life and how she did want to change it. Read the book instead.