‘It’s difficult to imagine how ground-breaking and controversial this was at the time’, said producer Kevin Loader. He was present with writer Hanif Kureishi and several cast members for the ICA screening of all four episodes of the BBC’s ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’, broadcast in 1993.
The film retains its disturbing aspects, evoking a sleazy 1970s South London that constantly undermines ideals. The well-scripted adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel, soon to be released on DVD, satirises psychedelic décor and clothes, the craze for alternative religion, drugs and free love, ‘progressive’ theatre, entrenched racism and the political activism that marked the era.
They form a startling backdrop to the coming-of-age story of Karim, (Naveen Andrews) , born to an English mother Margaret (Brenda Blethyn) and Indian father Haroon (Roshan Seth) , the latter film’s eponymous and opportunist antihero.
Seamlessly directed by Roger Mitchell and benefiting from the period recreation in which the BBC excels, the film’s strong cast provide hilarious individual and ensemble playing; the actors pitch their performances to suggest a hyper-realism that resonates with truth.
The film looks authentic and sounds great. Karim, charismatic hero of a former Kureishi adaptation, ‘My Beautiful Launderette’ (1985) cycles through the streets to a lyrical David Bowie soundtrack. Bowie himself is brilliantly represented by Charlie (Steven Mackintosh), Karim’s English friend who initiates him into sex, progressing from school-boy poseur whose manager collects him at the school gate in an orange car, to pop stardom in New York.
Karim observes as his father’s marriage comes apart. Bohemian mistress Eva (Susan Fleetwood) brings a touch of Bloomsbury to Bromley, espousing post-pill liberation and entertaining guests round a plastic-topped kitchen table. Karim’s father, in embroidered kaftan leads the chanting for groups of cross-legged suburbanites.
Ideals are undermined by prosaic circumstances: political activist and fringe actor Terry waits for ‘the call’ to revolution in a Brixton backstreet flat; the theatre group Karim is persuaded to join performs method-style growls and writhings in a bare rehearsal room; Karim falls in love with middle-class actress Eleanor (Jemma Redgrave) only to become currency at a partner-swap session with the group’s lascivious director (Matthew Pyke) and his attractive wife (Maureen Hibbert).
The characters themselves are flawed: Haroon, one page ahead of his acolytes, dreams of quitting his civil servant’s job and his dreary domestic set-up. Jamila, Karim’s Asian girl-friend outwardly complies with an arranged marriage whose main purpose is to provide help in her father's corner shop. She espouses political causes but leaves the baby-sitting to her rejected husband whilst she sleeps with her lover. Social climber Eva may airily declare herself a ‘designer’ at her dinner parties but it is Karim’s English uncle who knocks down walls and executes the paint-work, once Eva has meditated herself into choosing the colour. At the centre, observing and absorbing, is a bemused Karim. ‘I’ll fuck anything’, he says to the fringe theatre group, and obligingly changes his accent to make it sound more ‘ethnic’ in a ruthless caricature of Jamila’s grotesque husband.
Racial antagonism at the domestic level is represented by Haroon’s cartoonishly snobby sister-in-law. A passer-by calls, with bizarre inaccuracy, ‘Get back in your rickshaw’ as Haroon embraces Karim in the street, and a school-friend’s hostile father barks ‘We’re with Enoch’ at him on the door-step. The 1977 National Front march in Lewisham is the background to Jamila’s remonstration with Karim about his lack of commitment; he failed to join her and her boyfriend among the demonstrators. Racial stereotyping is presented more humorously, in Haroon’s act as guru, or Karim’s accommodations to what is expected onstage. Finally, Karim’s changed status from child to adult revolves around his racial identity and his decision to emulate his father: to conform to society’s expectations rather than try to change them. That he takes this decision remains controversial, in this highly watchable and entertaining drama.
BBCDVD2489 expected release: 17/09/2007