Review: The Namesake
There's a touching love story in The Namesake, Mira Nair's film of the Jhumpa Lahiri novel, between a self-conscious young Indian engineer living in New York and the wife he brings over from the home country. Their self-sacrificing love amid humble beginnings recalls Satyajit Ray's masterpiece The World of Apu. But everything that makes The Namesake a pleasure, including that plotline, strong lead performances and Nair's eye for telling details, often gets lost in an overall story that comes off as contrived.
That couple name their first child Gogol, after the Russian writer, for reasons that become clear only later. He grows up in an affluent suburb of New York in the 1980s and goes on to Yale and the company of tony Manhattan intellectuals, but all the while he's so ridiculed for this name that he's torn between using it and a more traditional Indian name, Nikil. The idea of such a name causing its holder that much suffering outside of, say, a small town in Arkansas is the sort of thing that might be amusing in a fanciful novel. I've never read Lahiri's book. But in this film, of which humor is not a strong point, the conflict that drives the main story seems so unlikely that it becomes a distraction. And it's not the only piece of Gogol's story that feels forced.
These unlikely (or underdeveloped) plot developments and a sometimes clunky script contrast with the film's sophisticated perspective on migration. Though the trailer strongly suggests it, The Namesake never sends its young protagonist to India in a successful search for his roots. His family's identity is unique, rooted in both America and India as well as in their own shared experiences. And there are subtle touches -- shots of a scarf tangled in a phone cord, of the father smoking alone outdoors, seen through a window -- that make that portrayal richer. The acting is fine as well, especially by Gogol (Kal Penn) and his father and mother (Irfan Khan and Tabu). The Namesake often feels as if it would have been better if its makers had had the courage of their convictions.
That couple name their first child Gogol, after the Russian writer, for reasons that become clear only later. He grows up in an affluent suburb of New York in the 1980s and goes on to Yale and the company of tony Manhattan intellectuals, but all the while he's so ridiculed for this name that he's torn between using it and a more traditional Indian name, Nikil. The idea of such a name causing its holder that much suffering outside of, say, a small town in Arkansas is the sort of thing that might be amusing in a fanciful novel. I've never read Lahiri's book. But in this film, of which humor is not a strong point, the conflict that drives the main story seems so unlikely that it becomes a distraction. And it's not the only piece of Gogol's story that feels forced.
These unlikely (or underdeveloped) plot developments and a sometimes clunky script contrast with the film's sophisticated perspective on migration. Though the trailer strongly suggests it, The Namesake never sends its young protagonist to India in a successful search for his roots. His family's identity is unique, rooted in both America and India as well as in their own shared experiences. And there are subtle touches -- shots of a scarf tangled in a phone cord, of the father smoking alone outdoors, seen through a window -- that make that portrayal richer. The acting is fine as well, especially by Gogol (Kal Penn) and his father and mother (Irfan Khan and Tabu). The Namesake often feels as if it would have been better if its makers had had the courage of their convictions.
Labels: Kal Penn, Mira Nair, reviews, The Namesake
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