Movie impressions: The Namesake

My eagerly-awaited blog posts on Movie Impressions from Telluride did not happen this year, thanks to my travel about halfway across the world to Hong Kong. However, in a rare bit of cinematic luck, I happened to catch an advance screening of Mira Nair's upcoming film "The Namesake", last Friday evening. Amazingly enough, it was the second-ever showing of this film worldwide, with the New York City premiere to come later that weekend and a full theatre run planned only as late as March 2007.

If you guessed that the film is based on Jhumpa Lahiri's identically titled novel, you were right. Having not read the book, I must view the film as a standalone piece and it works quite fine that way. The movie spans some 25 years in the lives of its main characters: Ashoke Ganguly, his wife Ashima, and their son Gogol, named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Ashoke emigrates from India to the US for his graduate studies, marries and imports Ashima from India and eventually has two American-born children. The film focusses on the culture shocks that hit Ashoke and Ashima (especially her) and on Gogol's crises of identity and adjustment. If this sounds like an all-too-familiar FOB/ABCD story, well, it is. Unapologetically so. But, and to the film's credit, lyrically so. While the film may not be profound (and don't believe any "outside observers" who find profundity in it), it is deeply satisfying for its authentic portrayal of its central characters and their environments as they shuttle between Kolkata and northeastern US.

Afterwards, in a post-film discussion session, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking one-on-one with Mira Nair. My better half couldn't resist asking her to pose for a picture and I was happy to tag along, so...