| Show Namesake Fine F ne and strong threads of cultural identity 0 Desson Thomson The Wa Washington Post Like the selling best novel its it's based on The Namesake chronicles two generations of an Indian immigrant family with compelling flow As the births marriages and funerals become a steady stream we realize the currents affecting their lives arc are not so so different from those shaping ours Given the impatient metronome of movie storytelling Indian director Mira Nair and her partner manage to telescope the books book's extensive narrative into a two-hour two experience The result We are moved by the movies movie's themes of cultural displacement and th the power of chance but also aware whether weve we've read Lahiri's 2003 book or not- not that the Namesake movie frequently alludes to complexities it doesn't have hav havethe the screen time to fully frilly explore The movies movie's fateful course begins in the late on a train to Calcutta when Ashoke Ganguli Irfan Khan as a young man meets a fellow pass passenger nger the kind of auspicious figure we usually find in fairy fairytales tales who tales who encourages him to see the world It is the combination of this chance meeting the calamitous event that follows and the short story by Russian realist Nikolai Gogol he heis heis heis is reading at the time that sets Ashoke's future After marrying Ashima Tabu a spoken soft-spoken Calcutta bride he immigrates to America and starts a new life For the newlyweds building a family a a spiritually absorbing calling caIling under normal circumstances circumstances becomes i beco becomes c ms m es almost mythic as they exchange the warmth and tradition-bound tradition familiarity of Calcutta for the coldness and secular lifestyle of New York For the virtually everything seems fraught with cultural foreboding A gas oven that works 24 hours a day Public displays of affection at the dinner table At the other end of the immigration spectrum are the son they name Gogol played as an adolescent by Kal Penn and his sister Sonia Sahira Nair no relation to the d director rector who grow up as Americans and must negotiate their o own roads to multicultural self self awareness This dialogue between cultures echoes the th theme me of most of Nair's films Her debut feature Salaam Bombay set among the impoverished street kids of that city was nominated for foran foran foran an Academy Award in 1988 Her delightful Mississippi Masala The Perez Family and Monsoon Wedding invoked an an ethnic rainbow of characters from the Deep South to Uganda India to Cuba Even poorly received Vanity Fair which starred Reese Witherspoon takes its English heroine to India In these films and The Namesake in particular Nair treasures the sanctity of all cultures discouraging assimilation and suggesting that happiness comes from embracing both worlds In The Namesake no noone noone noone one illustrates this dualistic dilemma more clearly than Gogol Gogo The Americanized teen-ager teen smoking pot and chafing about his name grows up to become a Manhattan architect horrifying his parents with his American girlfriend Maxine Jacinda Barrett who calls them by their first names But then a significant family event brings him face to face with the culture hes he's avoided and Gogol Gogolis is soon bedecking himself with marigolds and shaving his head Unfortunately much of Gogol's life including a significant relationship with Robinson a very cosmopolitan Indian woman whizzes by without the cumulative heft found in Lahiri's nove novel Sonia his sister gets even less time As Gogol transitions fr from in infant to college student to married adult in jarring time jumps its it's harder to connect with him than his parents whose scenes are arc given fuller organic measure In its final stages the movie feels rushed as if the filmmakers have an eye on the clock Nair succeeds in casting a glowing sheen over the movie deftly imbuing it with sensuality and stylishness Theres There's a scene of lovemaking conveyed entirely with hands bangles and red-etched red feet that echoes the strategy in her movie Kama Sutra A Tale of Love And the warm wann spirited performances bring bringus us close to th the story Penn who many aud audiences will recognize as one half of the duo in inthe inthe inthe and the very funny Harold I Kumar Go to White Castle is thoroughly convincing as Gogol Gogo And Khan and Tabu both household names in India make a tender affecting couple They face the challenge of subtle roles Khan must play a man whose quiet intense passion makes itself known in minimal gestures and inflections And Tabu deftly draws us in as an old- old style wife who mostly keeps her pangs of homesickness and unspoken aspirations to herself It is their slow- slow burning romance which grows from an arranged marriage to true love that lights the way for the generations ahead |
