 |
|
|
|
The Namesake
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. We first see him as a ratty-haired, pot-smoking teenager -- he 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, 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 scoffer 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 Gogol (who's changed his name to "Nick" now) gets involved with while studying architecture at Yale.
Nick/Gogol shaves his head in mourning when he learns of his father's death. Returning for the wake he experiences a guilt that brings him back to his father and his pet name 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 and even seems to believe it will be great fun. Gogol declares it's "a family thing" and ejects her from his life.
The conundrum of living in two cultures is embedded in the story of Gogol's name, a theme the film keeps going back to over and over again. The beauty of this theme is that it's 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, to 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 both a song of praise for America as a land where you can become whoever you want to be and an affirmation that you also can't run away from who you are. It's far more besides, though, and it would be unwise to spin out too many generalizations about a story as satisfying and specific as this one. One thing it's very safe to say is that Nair has made an extremely touching and thought-provoking film. ©2007 Chris Knipp |
Mira Nair's film adaptation of a Jhumpa Lahri bestseller is not only much better than her misfired 
Gogol is played by American-born comic Kal Penn of 
But the book adds a new, bitter jolt of realism 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 Asoke'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. 
The Francophile girl from the London Bengali family, Moushume (Zuleikha Robinson), is now available and living in New York and Nick, in a tentative return to tradition, goes on a date with her -- and discovers she's 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 returning to the practice of classical song. You can go home again, in fact you must. But if you're bicultural and second generation, it's trickier: Sonia and Gogol are left to work out their salvation with diligence.