Cinematical

The Namesake, director Mira Nair's adaptation of the book by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a deeply felt look at the ties of family and birthplace, the loneliness of living far from your home, and the connections that hold everything together, sometimes in ways we don't appreciate until much later. Nair examines these issues by focusing her lens on two generations of the Ganguli family: husband Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and wife Ashima (Tabu), a Bengali couple who immigrated to New York from India, and their children, Gogol and Sonia, who were born and raised in America.

Ashima moves halfway around the world to live with her new husband, Ashoke, following an arranged marriage. Leaving behind the warm, familiar climate of Calcutta, Ashima must adjust to life in New York in winter. Lonely, cold and depressed, Ashima nonetheless does her best to make her way in her new home, as she learns to love her new husband. Before long two children, son Gogol (Kal Penn) and daughter Sonia (Sahira Nair) have expanded their little family and bound them to their new country, and the Gangulis move to a house in the 'burbs in Nyack.

As is often the case with children of immigrants who are born and raised American in a home still tied to another way of life, there is a vast disconnect between the older and younger generations of the Ganguli family. Ashoke and Ashima struggle to retain traditional values; they want their children to have all the benefits of growing up American, without the loss of traditional Indian culture and custom. Young Gogol, in particular, struggles with both his name (he was named, on the spur-of-the-moment, after his father's favorite Russian author, Nicolai Gogol) and his heritage. Gogol only wants to fit in, to be just like other American kids, but no matter how hard he tries he can't escape the reality that other people look at him and see him first as Indian.

As Gogol attempts to find his way and forge his own sense of self-identity, he systematically rejects everything his parents value, including his name. His father wants him to follow in his footsteps and become an engineer; after a visit with his family to the Taj Mahal, though, Gogol decides to become an architect. He announces that he is changing his name to the more American-sounding Nick. He moves to Yale and promptly begins dating one of the richest, whitest girls there, Max (Jacinda Barrett), even though he knows his parents expect him to marry a nice Bengali girl.

On a visit home (his first with Max, who violates every cultural taboo -- no kissing, no hand-holding -- Gogol has warned her against the minute she walks in the door), Gogol's father finally explains to him why his name is so special to him: as a young man, he was critically injured in a train wreck that killed almost everyone on board. He was reading Gogol on the train, and was having a conversation with a fellow passenger who urged him to spend some time seeing the world. "Every day since then," the father tells his son, "has been a gift."

Nonetheless, like many young men, all that Gogol wants is to be as different from his own father as possible. Everything changes for Gogol when his father dies of a sudden heart attack, and Gogol is left to face his grief and guilt, while his mother, having finally adjusted to living in America with her husband, finds herself facing a future alone as a widow with two grown children. Anyone who's been through the loss of a close family member or friend (and who among us hasn't?) will relate to Gogol's aching sense of longing to be able to turn back the clock and appreciate his father while he was still alive, and the changes grief rends on both Gogol and Ashima form the heart and soul of this beautifully told story.

Nair was inspired to make the film when she read the book and connected deeply to its themes of living in two worlds and of learning to make a new life in a strange place far from everything and everyone you've ever known. The book closely mirrors Nair's own life experiences, and as a result this is by far her most deeply personal film. The film is beautifully shot as well, taking us from the skyscrapers of New York to the streets of Calcutta to the Taj Mahal, tying culture and geography together seamlessly with carefully wrought visual imagery.

Throughout the film, Nair visually shuttles us between Calcutta and New York, showing us the similarities between the cities – their massive bridges, crowded buildings, and streets teeming with people -- as well as their differences. Life moves at a slower pace in Calcutta, and on the Ganguli family's visits to their homeland, their very Americanized children are forced to slow down the hectic Western pace they've grown accustomed to.

Kal Penn (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) reaches dazzling new heights as an actor with his performance here, perfectly capturing the inner turmoil of a young man being raised half a world away from his parents' homeland. An outsider among outsiders, Gogol doesn't fit in with his parents and their traditional values, nor does he quite fit in with the white kids, and Penn deftly creates a portrait of a young man torn between two cultures.

Veteran Indian actress Tabu turns in a moving performance as Ashima, following her character along the path of subtle changes she follows as she progresses from blushing bride to middle-aged widow. Tabu and Khan together create a lovely chemistry between Ashima and Ashoke – two people wed in an arranged marriage who learn to love each other, but who show their love in much more subtle ways than most American couples. Barrett gives one of her better performances as Max, the rich white girl in love with an Indian boy. Also worth noting are Sahira Nair, who plays nicely off Penn as the younger sister who alternately loathes and adores her big brother, and Zuleikha Robinson as Moushimi, the sexy, intellectual Bengali girl with a wild sexual past, whose relationship with Gogol marks both his acceptance of himself as Indian and his transition from angst-filled boy to lovestruck young man.

The script was adapted by Sooni Taraporevala, who previously worked with Nair on Salaam Bombay! and Mississippi Masala. Taraporevela and Nair stayed as close as possible to the source material in adapting the book for the screen, and the resulting story rings true at almost ever turn. The pacing starts out a bit slowly – I was expecting the story to focus solely on Gogol, and was surprised to find the first part of the film focuses on his parents. Nair takes her time setting up the story, but the result of her careful set-up is that by the time Gogol is lost in grief over the loss of his father, we're so invested in the story that we can't help but feel heart-wrenched as well.