Fans of HBO’s stupidly successful sitcom Silicon Valley will be well aware of exactly who Kumail Nanjiani is.
As will eagle-eyed comedy fans and stand-up devotees; he’s shown up in bit parts all over the place for nearly a decade and is a pretty firm name in certain circuits.
But to the large, stonking, movie-going majority of us, (and until recently, me included), Nanjiani is a ghost, an occasionally familiar face but not really a whole lot more than that. As of this summer though, all that’s about to change, thanks to The Big Sick, a weird, wonky but truly wonderful little rom-com he’s put together with his co-writer and wife Emily V. Gordon.
I know, I know, rom-coms are a hard nut to crack, and too often come out either too sappy, too sluggish or ultimately awfully made. I’ve never been a major fan, aside from a few obvious classics like When Harry Met Sally, Four Weddings and a Funeral, or the frankly undefeatable Annie Hall. So believe me when I tell you that The Big Sick is the real deal, and that Nanjiani may well be the next rom-com messiah.
It’s a film that’s been put together with a whole lot of love, from a whole lot of different people; in all honesty he’s helped out a heap here by Gordon’s words on the page, Michael Showalter’s sensitive direction, and a never-ending supporting cast of comedy greats like Ray Romano. But as I walked out of that cinema, with the lights still low and the credits still playing through, it was Nanjiani’s name that resonated the most.
Trends show up in the movie industry all the time; when one film does well, everyone else wants a slice of that pie. Woody Allen’s bumbling cynic of a character is still around to this day, there’s a bit of him everywhere. And with The Big Sick, it feels like Nanjiani’s own self-deprecating Pakistani comedian (which too, has a few minor shades of Allen here and there) is the start of another fast-moving trend.
He’s a writer and a performer who’s very aware of where he comes from, and very aware of the uphill battle he faces because of it, and so that cultural gap he’s trying to breach becomes a major part of his work. Fellow comedian and sitcom star Aziz Ansari has found the same with his own self-made TV show Master of None, and between them (Nanjiani in particular in the movie world), this clash of cultures is heading straight to the forefront of American comedy. Put simply, he’s moving the dial, one culturally-provoked joke at a time.
And I think the major connective tissue between them all here: Nanjiani, Ansari, even Allen, and When Harry Met Sally’s Nora Ephron, is honesty. They each have an incredible ability to just cut back the bullshit that pads out so many movies – rom-coms in particular – and, without sounding too cliche, just telling it like it is. In The Big Sick, Nanjiani and Gordon deal with some pretty difficult (and not all that comedically-friendly) themes, but it’s their outward honesty, and Nanjiani’s stripped-back lead performance, that helps drive this one into the realms of something special.
This is a writer and a performer who’s not phased by the glitzy lights and mega money pull of the film industry; who’s not afraid to go out on a limb and make something truly different and personal, that strikes a chord with a new, much more culturally-aware generation. The Big Sick is Nanjiani’s first real leading man role, and his first self-penned feature-length screenplay too, so there’s definitely lots of ground still to cover. But when you look at just how comfortable he is with, not only being himself on screen, but with unleashing a more thoughtful and candid rom-com on the world, you can only assume that we’re going to get even bigger and brighter things from him any day now.
He’s not Allen to his core. Nor is he Ephron or even his own personal hero Richard Curtis; Nanjiani has his own style. He’s a very different, very new breed of comedian, but in the exact same way that each of the above was new and daring in their own time. And while The Big Sick is a phenomenal punt in the right direction for the former sitcom star, it feels like just the very beginning of a beautiful friendship for Nanjiani and the movies.
Ben Robins
