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THE NAMESAKE
Directed by: Mira Nair. Written by: Sooni Taraporevala, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Produced by: Lydia Dean Pilcher & Mira Nair.
Director of Photography: Frederick Elmes.
Edited by: Allyson C. Johnson.
Music by: Nitin Sawhney.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Language: English, Bengali, & Hindi with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: USA. 122 min. Rated PG-13.
With: Kal Penn, Tabu, Irrfan Khan, Jacinda Barrett, Zuleikha Robinson, Ruma Guha Thakurta & Sukanya.

Mira Nair, famed for bringing Indian storylines into the English-speaking mainstream (Monsoon Wedding), brings to life Pulitzer-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s best-selling novel. Along with screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, she deftly adapts her source material into a lush depiction of an Indian ex-patriot couple raising their children in America with the hope their cultural legacy will not get lost in the land of milk and honey.

But unlike their parents’ teenage years, Gogol (Kal Penn) and his sister have lived lives full of weed, grunge music, and piercings. Gogol, in his lifelong struggle to be more American and less Indian, goes so far as to change his name to Nicholas after graduating high school. His parents had wanted to name him Nikhil, but as a five-year-old he insisted on keeping his nickname, a play off the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, who brought his parents together during their courtship with his poems and short stories. This is where his feelings of being ostracized began – having a first name that is neither American nor Indian. Instead, he has a nickname born out of his parents’ own confusion.

And while Gogol’s story is performed beautifully by Penn and written with painful elegance, his return to his heritage is long in coming and inevitable. What’s most engaging about The Namesake is the story of his parents, Ashima (Tabu) and Ashoke (Irrfan Khan). Perhaps foreseeing the audience’s interest in Ashima and Ashoke, the filmmakers veered slightly from the book and chose a point of view that switches between the three characters throughout the film. (Their other child, Sonia, is mostly scenery.)

They were engaged on the same day that they met. Having their marriage arranged by their parents, Ashima and Ashoke were strangers when Ashoke brought Ashima from India to his tiny Brooklyn apartment, where they eventually find love and have children, before moving to suburbia. Ashima’s transformation from a wild child to a shy American housewife turned business woman forging an identity on her own rather than from her family is a riveting and often heartbreaking story. Tabu’s subtle acting choices add even more depth to a character laden with helplessness, sadness, and reserves of great joy. Ashoke’s evolution from a shy boy in India to a proud man but reserved father is just as beautifully portrayed.

Along with Gogol, these characters’ maturation into wisdom are not hard-won lessons, but transformations based on experience. That’s not something portrayed often on film, and it’s rarely portrayed this well. Zachary Jones
March 9, 2007