Chris Knipp
03-17-2007, 03:34 PM
MIRA NAIR: THE NAMESAKE
A warm tale of living in two cultures
W a r n i n g: s p o i l e r s
Mira Nair's film adaptation of a Jhumpa Lahri bestseller is not only much better than her misfired Vanity Fair but probably the best thing she's ever done. The Namesake is about a Bengali couple who marry in the late 70's and go to live in New York and have children who have to learn to live in two cultures. A London-born Indian herself, Nair truly understands and feels this material. The film has her former warmth, with a new level of subtlety. Cramming a multi-generational novel into a couple of hours makes the film feel a bit overstuffed, but in compensation there's novelistic richness and a wealth of feeling, and the winning cast never falters.
Bollywood regulars Irshan Khan and Tabu play the appealingly nerdy dad or "Baba," Arshoke and his arranged-wedding bride Ashima, a beautiful classical singer. She shrinks all his clothes at the Laundromat, but with sweet shyness they become lovers and have a boy and a girl. The boy grows up to be the protagonist of the latter part of the film -- which however never loses touch with the parents. He gets two names -- Nikhil for formal use, Gogol as a pet name. He chooses to use the latter when he goes to school -- a decision he comes to regret when he realizes how funny it sounds to Americans.
Once he's no longer a little wide-eyed boy, we see him as a ratty-haired, pot-smoking teenager -- who tells a couple of stoner buddies about how making out with a girl was wrecked when she asked what he's called.
"Gogol Ganguli"! they chirp. "End of seduction 101," he says.
Gogol is played by American-born comic Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, whose looks are Indian but outlook and voice are made in USA. Penn's sense of irony is essential to the humor with which the film views the tribulations of being of two cultures, and he makes the transition into a serious dramatic role very successfully.
Gogol, like both his sister and a bookish young Francophile woman from another Bengali family visiting from London, is gradually transformed from a somewhat misfit adolescent into an elegant and attractive adult. The film is as adept at physical transformations as it is at the little cultural subtleties. The arc of the film is Gogol's transformation from a boy who scoffs at his origins into a mature grownup who loves and honors them.
Like some of Nair's earlier films, The Namesake is full of bustling scenes of Indian togetherness. The humor is always gentle. Everyone is likable, except perhaps for Maxime (Jacinda Barrett), an annoying, not very deeply portrayed rich white girl with whom Gogol (who's calling himself "Nick" now) gets involved while studying architecture at Yale.
Nair's warm world gets a a new, bitter jolt of realism from Jhumpa Lahri's book when, with his son at Yale, Baba goes to Cleveland to teach for six months and suddenly dies there. The sight of his "nice" but sterile apartment in Cleveland when he first arrives is a chilling and profoundly meaningful culture shock. The way the place screams emptiness shows its lack of all the things Indian culture offers -- the warmth of tradition and the family togetherness that have temporarily disappeared from Arshoke's life because his wife, out of shyness or fear or loyalty to home and hearth, has chosen not to go with him to Cleveland. And so when the tragedy occurs he is alone. Their daughter has moved away from home and "Nick" is off with his WASP princess in Oyster Bay escaping from his ethnic background. On that weekend he has neglected even to call his mother to say he's okay.
But when he learns of his father's death, he shaves his head in mourning. Returning for the wake he experiences a guilt that brings him back to his father and to his pet name Gogol and the story behind it. In this context the self-centeredness of his culturally tone-deaf WASP girlfriend appears in stark colors when she comes by. She thinks she can go to India with them for the scattering of the father's ashes into the Ganges; she even seems to believe it will be fun. Gogol declares it's "a family thing" and ejects her from his life.
The Francophile girl from the London Bengali family, Moushume (Zuleikha Robinson), is now available and living in New York and Gogol, in a tentative return to tradition, goes on a date with her -- and discovers she has become terribly stylish and sexy. Their marriage follows almost too fast, but that's the point. Gogol's sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) has an American boyfriend, but this mixed relationship works and is accepted by their mother -- who decides to sell the house and spend six months of every year in India, where she returns to the practice of classical song. One can go home again, in fact one must. But if one is bicultural and second generation, it's trickier: Sonia and Gogol are left to work out their salvation with diligence.
The conundrum of living in two cultures is embedded in the story of Gogol's name, a theme to which the film keeps returning. The beauty of this theme is that it is a matter of hints, not lectures or homilies. As "Baba" tells it, the name had something to do with a dangerous railway trip and a man with advice on the train; the impulse to travel and explore and a need to give thanks for survival. The Gogol involved is him of The Overcoat. "We all, "Baba" says, came out of that overcoat."
The Namesake is a song of praise for America as a land where you can become whoever you want to be, and at the same time an affirmation that you can't run away from who you are. It's far more besides, and it would be unwise to spin out too many generalizations about a story that is as satisfying and specific as this one. But it's safe to say Nair has made an extremely touching and thought-provoking film.
A warm tale of living in two cultures
W a r n i n g: s p o i l e r s
Mira Nair's film adaptation of a Jhumpa Lahri bestseller is not only much better than her misfired Vanity Fair but probably the best thing she's ever done. The Namesake is about a Bengali couple who marry in the late 70's and go to live in New York and have children who have to learn to live in two cultures. A London-born Indian herself, Nair truly understands and feels this material. The film has her former warmth, with a new level of subtlety. Cramming a multi-generational novel into a couple of hours makes the film feel a bit overstuffed, but in compensation there's novelistic richness and a wealth of feeling, and the winning cast never falters.
Bollywood regulars Irshan Khan and Tabu play the appealingly nerdy dad or "Baba," Arshoke and his arranged-wedding bride Ashima, a beautiful classical singer. She shrinks all his clothes at the Laundromat, but with sweet shyness they become lovers and have a boy and a girl. The boy grows up to be the protagonist of the latter part of the film -- which however never loses touch with the parents. He gets two names -- Nikhil for formal use, Gogol as a pet name. He chooses to use the latter when he goes to school -- a decision he comes to regret when he realizes how funny it sounds to Americans.
Once he's no longer a little wide-eyed boy, we see him as a ratty-haired, pot-smoking teenager -- who tells a couple of stoner buddies about how making out with a girl was wrecked when she asked what he's called.
"Gogol Ganguli"! they chirp. "End of seduction 101," he says.
Gogol is played by American-born comic Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, whose looks are Indian but outlook and voice are made in USA. Penn's sense of irony is essential to the humor with which the film views the tribulations of being of two cultures, and he makes the transition into a serious dramatic role very successfully.
Gogol, like both his sister and a bookish young Francophile woman from another Bengali family visiting from London, is gradually transformed from a somewhat misfit adolescent into an elegant and attractive adult. The film is as adept at physical transformations as it is at the little cultural subtleties. The arc of the film is Gogol's transformation from a boy who scoffs at his origins into a mature grownup who loves and honors them.
Like some of Nair's earlier films, The Namesake is full of bustling scenes of Indian togetherness. The humor is always gentle. Everyone is likable, except perhaps for Maxime (Jacinda Barrett), an annoying, not very deeply portrayed rich white girl with whom Gogol (who's calling himself "Nick" now) gets involved while studying architecture at Yale.
Nair's warm world gets a a new, bitter jolt of realism from Jhumpa Lahri's book when, with his son at Yale, Baba goes to Cleveland to teach for six months and suddenly dies there. The sight of his "nice" but sterile apartment in Cleveland when he first arrives is a chilling and profoundly meaningful culture shock. The way the place screams emptiness shows its lack of all the things Indian culture offers -- the warmth of tradition and the family togetherness that have temporarily disappeared from Arshoke's life because his wife, out of shyness or fear or loyalty to home and hearth, has chosen not to go with him to Cleveland. And so when the tragedy occurs he is alone. Their daughter has moved away from home and "Nick" is off with his WASP princess in Oyster Bay escaping from his ethnic background. On that weekend he has neglected even to call his mother to say he's okay.
But when he learns of his father's death, he shaves his head in mourning. Returning for the wake he experiences a guilt that brings him back to his father and to his pet name Gogol and the story behind it. In this context the self-centeredness of his culturally tone-deaf WASP girlfriend appears in stark colors when she comes by. She thinks she can go to India with them for the scattering of the father's ashes into the Ganges; she even seems to believe it will be fun. Gogol declares it's "a family thing" and ejects her from his life.
The Francophile girl from the London Bengali family, Moushume (Zuleikha Robinson), is now available and living in New York and Gogol, in a tentative return to tradition, goes on a date with her -- and discovers she has become terribly stylish and sexy. Their marriage follows almost too fast, but that's the point. Gogol's sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) has an American boyfriend, but this mixed relationship works and is accepted by their mother -- who decides to sell the house and spend six months of every year in India, where she returns to the practice of classical song. One can go home again, in fact one must. But if one is bicultural and second generation, it's trickier: Sonia and Gogol are left to work out their salvation with diligence.
The conundrum of living in two cultures is embedded in the story of Gogol's name, a theme to which the film keeps returning. The beauty of this theme is that it is a matter of hints, not lectures or homilies. As "Baba" tells it, the name had something to do with a dangerous railway trip and a man with advice on the train; the impulse to travel and explore and a need to give thanks for survival. The Gogol involved is him of The Overcoat. "We all, "Baba" says, came out of that overcoat."
The Namesake is a song of praise for America as a land where you can become whoever you want to be, and at the same time an affirmation that you can't run away from who you are. It's far more besides, and it would be unwise to spin out too many generalizations about a story that is as satisfying and specific as this one. But it's safe to say Nair has made an extremely touching and thought-provoking film.