The Namesake

The Namesake creates a lovely, colorful, entrancing atmosphere but speeds itself along to aggressively to really set the mood. Emotionally, it connects only in its lulls, a fact that seems dictated by the dense material of its origin: Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name. Watching the film is like trying to read a book while someone else keeps flipping the pages ahead too quickly. You want to settle into the quiet moments, but the movie must press onward in order to squeeze in the decades which elapse from start to finish.

That’s not to say that it’s a bad film. It’s actually quite a strong film. It’s just so clear to me that it could have been a much better one. The gentle visual rhythms of its finale and several scenes elsewhere actually come close to matching the elegant beauty of Lahiri’s prose. There are just too many scenes that feel like Cliffs Notes approximations of the text to make this a truly outstanding adaptation. Regardless, the story remains passionate and engaging. Its narrative details the nuances of familial miscommunication as embodied by a young man named Gogol (a surprisingly tender and effective Kal Penn). Gogol’s name has deep personal relevance to his father (Irfan Khan), but Gogol does not understand this connection and wants only to abandon what he considers to be just a silly sounding name and take on a more sophisticated one, one that will also eventually be Americanized into simply “Nick.” This ethnic cleansing mentality is also a subject of the film which charts Gogol’s maturation into someone who simply wants to be an American teen into a man appreciative of his Bengali family and their heritage. It’s an emotional journey and a quest of personal discovery that plays out in a broad cross-cultural arena.

By far the most wondrous performance here is by an Indian actress named Tabu who plays Ashima, the matriarch of the family. She comes to America at a young age to marry her husband and spends her whole life adjusting and balancing her two cultural worlds. She’s the heart of this poetic film and Tabu delivers the most subtle, lovely performance anyone could envision. She breathes a soft, charismatic energy into the character that convinces you of her endless strength while expressing an inherent vulnerability. Along with the rest of the cast and director Mira Nair, Tabu brings to life Lahiri’s work with an impressive amount of spirit and grace.

Grade: B+