TRH Movie: The Namesake

On Sunday, after a manic morning of attempting to clean the house because my writer's group is coming over tonight, I escaped for an afternoon to the movies with Tara. We ended up seeing Mira Nair's The Namesake, which got a great review in EW this past week.

The filmed adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel manages to keep all of the good bits of a novel by utilizing a series of vignettes to tell the story. Within these smaller scenes, the larger narrative, the lives of the members of the Ganguli family, unfolds. I didn't finish the novel, I think I had 10 pages to read when I abandoned it, because it hadn't grabbed me entirely, so I knew what in essence was going to happen. But regardless, the film still managed to be engaging and utterly heart-stopping.

Gogol Ganguli (Kal Penn), named for his father Ashoke's life-saving obsession (he had the book in his hand when he survived a terrible train crash) with the Russian author Gogol, grows up in conflict: the push and pull between his world, his American lifestyle, and the world of his immigrant parents. It's a familiar story but Nair infuses both worlds with elements of the other highlighting the differences in truly inspirational ways, which is just part of why this film works so well.

Ashima (Tabu), on her first morning in a suburb of New York after marrying Ashoke (Irfan Khan), has a bowl of Rice Crispies with no milk, a bit of curry powder and some peanuts. She agrees to marry Ashoke because she likes his American shoes. Ashima's son, Gogol, finds his calling (he becomes an architect) while visiting the Taj Mahal for the first time on a trip with his parents to India. But then moments later, he's fallen in love with an upper crust American girl named Max.

It was wrong of me, I know, to expect Harold and Kumar playing unsuccessfully against type from Penn, but his turn as Gogol is career-making. Penn runs the gamut in age from a dope-smoking teenager to a man who not only weathers the tragedy of life, but wears it open on his face like a heart on a sleeve (how mixed up is that sentence from a metaphorical POV. Heh.). He's utterly striking in this film, and Nair's ability to craft subtle nuisances from scenes where the majority of the action is left out, makes an impact that's in your imagination, much like a novel.

Goodness me I loved Monsoon Wedding with its subtle sexuality and bold swashes of marigold, and The Namesake too, takes the best of both worlds, the opportunity and magic of an old-school American dream and builds into it the traditions and honour of an Indian lifestyle. Neither are things I know a lot about, being a Canadian girl from Toronto, but I felt the film gave me an insight into both, from the eyes of Gogol, of course, but also in the majestic Ashima, who changes intrinsically from the beginning of the movie until the end.

And how wonderful is it when a title fits so perfectly into the story itself? I guess it's what every writer dreams of? And that's enough gushing for one Tuesday morning.