The Namesake
This movie is not bad, I just couldn’t connect with it. I cried a little and my heart was warmed a little, but I felt all the interesting avenues were only explored by a few cobblestones before the film returns to teasing us about Gogol’s name. I must admit straight out that I thought The Namesake was directed by outside-friendly Gurinder Chadha, who directed Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. In fact, this film was helmed by the more serious-themed Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, a segment in 11′09′01). Why does this matter? I found myself looking for comedy in the Bengal world rather than letting myself follow the journey of this family. Eventually I felt I had witnessed a vibrant portrait of the immigrant experience, but I felt left behind.
Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan) has his world turned upside down and strands himself and his new wife Ashima (Tabu) in cold, strange America. In time their children are American-raised strangers, struggling with their own identities. Kal Penn plays their grown-up son, Gogol, named for Nikolai Gogol for reasons it feels like we were mean to understand, but do not late in the film. Gogol struggles with, embraces, and rejects this name, never understanding its source but never selling us on what’s wrong with it.
Penn does a good job distancing himself from his better-known Kumar character, and plays everything that Gogol experiences with aplomb. I was interested in knowing why Ashoke had chosen that name. At first I thought Gogol had a meaning in Bengali, like “baby boy” as we are contextually led to believe. I felt my intense ignorance of this culture throughout the movie. It was fascinating to see the contrasts between Calcutta and New York, but the untranslated action left me outside looking in. I made some inferences as to why characters did what they did, but I always felt a little lost. Perhaps that was by design - Nair wanting we spoiled natives in our native land to feel the unique pains of an immigrant. I prefer to think it’s an accidental exclusion, that The Namesake was just a love letter to Calcutta/Kolkata and a poem to celebrate the challenges of elsewhere, of not knowing who you really are.
Gogol does not know what his name really means and so he rejects it like his parents’ heritage. To find himself he has to discover who he began as. Ashima too grows beautifully in this movie as a character and Tabu wows with her performance. She is subservient to Gogol’s journey, but she is the heart of the movie for me.
India is to many westerners a hopelessly exotic place, but its exoticism is both highlighted and made common. It did make me want to learn more about this ancient and storied region. The Namesake is poignant (I cried once) and spans many years with grace and great acting, but it may be beyond my ken to truly appreciate as it deserves.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 3/9/07
Time in minutes 122
Director Mira Nair
Studio Fox Searchlight
