In "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," the new political thriller directed by Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding") adapted from the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by Mohsin Hamid, an incendiary Pakistani professor named Changez (played by Riz Ahmed) sits down with an American journalist (Liev Schreiber) to explain how he went from promising Wall Street analyst to the titular fundamentalist, implicated in the possible kidnapping of an American citizen. "I'm not the one you have to convince," says Schreiber's journalist.
But Changez tries anyway, and we follow in flashbacks, as he graduates from Princeton to Lower Manhattan finance, falling in love with Erica, a wealthy but troubled artist (Kate Hudson), along the way. He's unsettled by the nonchalant privilege of his new compatriots, but he loves America and the opportunities it affords him — until, that is, two planes hit the World Trade Center and America's perception of him abruptly changes.
Without the frame story, we'd simply follow the linear arc of Changez's road from Lahore to New York City and back again, but with the narrative device, we get to see how Changez has changed (yes that name packs a wallop) before we hear his story. We watch him describe his ambiguous response to the 9/11 attacks, and he becomes a richer, far more complex character than he might otherwise have been.
"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" hits theaters April 26, and in honor of its release, we thought we'd take a look at some of our other favorite films that use a framing device to great effect.
“Mildred Pierce” (1945)
James M. Cain purists weren't wild about this noirish adaptation of his 1941 novel of the same name; for a more faithful film version, they'd have to wait another sixty-six years for Todd Haynes five-part HBO miniseries, which cleaved wholly to the source material. One of the major liberties the filmmakers took with the original was to add a frame story, in which Mildred (Joan Crawford in her Oscar-winning comeback) is questioned by police about the murder of her second husband Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott). Through flashback and narration, the film circles back, telling how poor Mildred, the devoted single mother of two daughters, including the greedy and devious Veda (whose duplicity inspires the great line, "Personally, Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young") arrived at this harrowing point. The murder and the frame narrative moved the film from the subtler psychological milieu of the novel to no-holds-barred soapy thriller territory, but somehow it worked. From Crawford's smoldering suffering to Veda's (Ann Blyth) unctuous evil, “Mildred Pierce” is melodrama at its best. And now that Cain traditionalists have an adaptation of their own, the rest of us can appreciate how Crawford "shoulders" the frame.
“The Princess Bride” (1987)
After Ferris Bueller, little Fred Savage has probably the best sick day ever captured on film. In the frame story for "The Princess Bride," Savage plays the grandson of the great Peter Falk, listening at first reluctantly and then with increasing enthusiasm as his grandfather reads aloud the titular book, which packs every narrative punch a boy could want: "fencing, fighting, torture, poison" (and yes, there are a few kissing parts to be endured). As the film version of William Goldman's beloved novel cuts back and forth between the romance of Buttercup and Westley and the adventures of Inigo Montoya and Fezzik, we get to watch as young Savage, like us, becomes more and more engrossed. The frame story is an amazing testament to the thrill of being read to. And although a recent web video asks what if it had been Game of Thrones and not The Princess Bride that Falk had been reading to Savage (probably a little too much sex for a kid his age), we're pretty glad he picked the book he did.
“Titanic” (1997)
The reason James Cameron's behemoth three-hanky blockbuster is on our list is not because the frame story is enticing. In fact, despite Gloria Stewart's Oscar-nominated performance as Titanic-survivor Rose, the centenarian version of Kate Winslet's character, the long (almost forty minutes) introductory frame feels more like a history lesson than a narrative film, adding very little to the emotional thrust of the story. But it's these scenes of Cameron's actual dive to the Titanic wreckage that got the film made. As he told Playboy in 2009, "I made 'Titanic' because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie … I said, 'I'll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition.'" And so, at its core, the great romantic tearjerker is really the love story between a man and his shipwreck, with possibly the most expensive frame story ever made.
“Adaptation” (2002)
Oh "Adaptation," we're never really quite sure how to categorize you. The intensely metafictional film, about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's (Nicolas Cage) frustrating attempts to adapt Susan Orlean's nonfiction book The Orchid Thief, has all the trappings of a story-within-a-story frame narrative as we ostensibly enter in on a core story by first learning about the world of our storyteller. But this is Charlie Kaufman, the man who brought us "Being John Malkovich" and later "Synecdoche, New York" and who hasn't met a narrative he doesn't want to scramble and deconstruct. And so he subverts the classic frame story by making the writer's story the heart of the film and the story he's trying to tell us the frame — as Susan Orlean's (Meryl Streep) adventures with the wild world of orchid hunting become the entry point for the even wilder world of Kaufman's consciousness.
“The Notebook” (2004)
Without its frame story, Nick Cassavetes' film version of Nicholas Sparks' bestselling novel would have been predictable, sentimental schmaltz. With the frame story, it's predictable, sentimental, but delicious, schmaltz — and boy did we (and every teenage girl we know) lap it up. The film's core narrative is the fiery, Technicolor love story of Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel McAdams), mightily star-crossed and wildly head-over-heels — an onscreen romance brimming with enough passion that Gosling and McAdams handily won the 2004 MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss. But we hear the saga of Noah and Allie from Duke, an elderly (but dashing) gent, played by James Garner, who's reading it to another woman named Allie, this one played by Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes' mother), who despite suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's is, like us, riveted by the tale that also happens to be her and Duke's love story. It's tear-jerking sentiment, but of the most satisfying kind, the frame story of quiet, devoted love providing a much-needed counter to the all-consuming fireworks in the rest of the film.
Tell us: What other frame stories have wowed you?
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