THE NAMESAKE (USA/INDIA/JAPAN, 2006). Wednesday, 19th September 2007EVENING PERFORMANCE starts at 8.00 p.m.
USA/India/Japan, 2006. Directed by Mira Nair. Screenplay:
Sooni Taraporevala based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Photography (Colour): Frederick Elmes. Music: Nitin Sawhney.
Certificate: “12A”. Length: 122 minutes.
Leading Players: KALPENN (Gogol Ganguli), TABU (Ashima),
IRRFAN KHAN (Ashoke Ganguli), JACINDA BARRETT (Maxine),
ZULEIKA ROBINSON (Moushumi Mazumdar), BROOKE
SMITH (Sally), SAHIRA NAIR (Sonia), LINUS ROACHE
(Mr. Lawson), GLENNE HEADLY (Lydia).
Our season begins with the acclaimed feature that is the latest to come from Mira Nair who, born in India in 1957, made New York her home base after obtaining a scholarship to Harvard. Although she had started out in film-making with a number of documentaries (appropriate works for one who had studied sociology at Delhi University before moving to America), her big break-through came in 1987 with her first feature which was a fictional work. That film, which to date remains her finest achievement, was “Salaam Bombay!” which we screened in 1990. In it she created a drama that vividly brought home to its audiences the terrible conditions met by those who lived on the streets of that city and it was a film that in addition to carrying off two major prizes at Cannes was nominated for an Oscar.
Fired by social concern, “Salaam Bombay!” was so moving and so new in what it had to say that it became one of the most successful art-house movies of its decade. Subsequently, however, Mira Nair chose to develop her career by making films that could be seen as half-way between art-house cinema and the mainstream, some indeed being in English rather then sub-titled (the present piece is half and half). The films which she made included “Mississippi Masala”, “Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love” and “Monsoon Wedding", but even when the setting was elsewhere her work usually continued to make Indian characters central (an exception was her Thackeray adaptation “Vanity Fair” in 2003). “The Namesake” is very much in this tradition. It’s a work set partly in Calcutta and partly in New York and aimed at a popular audience but nevertheless it deals in serious themes since it utilises the differing attitudes of two generations to comment on the lives of families who become immigrants.
The writer of this film’s screenplay born in the same year as Mira Nair is Sooni Taraporevala who has worked with the director before (indeed it was she who wrote the script for “Salaam Bombay!”). This time, however, she provides not a screen original but an adaptation of a novel by the prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri. “The Namesake” was Lahiri’s first novel and became a best-seller. The story it tells is of the Ganguli family and of the marriage between Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu). Although it has been an arranged marriage, we see how the couple achieve a truly loving relationship. What complicates matters is that Ashoke is a young Bengali who has settled in America and it is to New York that he brings his bride. Indeed it’s there that their son, Gogol (Kal Penn), is born.
Thus it is that “The Namesake” becomes a story in which both generations play a significant part (Gogol does, in fact, have a sister, Sonia (Sahira Nair), but she is a character who remains on the sidelines). For the parents it’s a situation that reflects the uncertainty for immigrants of where they sense their true home to be. They may need to adapt and indeed wish to do so in order to feel part of the country they have chosen, but nevertheless their birth-place continues to exert a hold on them. In contrast, we have Gogol who grows up decidedly aware that his family’s Indian background marks him out but eager to see himself as being essentially a member of American society. When he reaches adulthood he finds himself drawn strongly to an all-American girl, Maxine (Jacinda Barrett). He meets her parents and moves in her circles but in consequence he consciously seeks to repress the Indian side of his nature. However, an unforeseen tragic event alters things and when a second woman enters his life it is someone who is herself a Bengali. This is Moushumi (Zuleika Robinson) but ensuing events confirm that when it comes to questions of whether or not it is wiser to marry someone of your own nationality there are no simple answers.
It will be realised that “The Namesake” is a work which in offering a tale of family life has much to say about the position of immigrants while also providing a telling contrast between its two main locations, Calcutta and New York. In this connection it should be stressed that one of the film’s finest achievements lies in the outstanding colour photography of Frederick Elmes which admirably evokes the contrasting atmospheres of these two great cities. But there’s also another aspect to “The Namesake” that I have yet to mention. In addition to everything else, it is a moving study of a father/son relationship that is not directly related to the other issues in the story even if it is true that Gogol disappoints his father through his inability to be appreciative of his ancestral background. Beyond that Gogol has always been uneasy about bearing such a strange name, one that refers to the Russian author of “The Overcoat”. Only late on does the son come to understand fully the significance of the name he has been given.
Quite apart from its engaging themes, the grip of its story-line and the quality of its photography, “The Namesake” impresses through the fine acting it contains. That Irrfan Khan should be so good as the father will come as no surprise to members of the EFS who had the chance to admire him on the lead role in Ashif Kapardia’s “The Warrior” in 2002 (he is again very powerful in the upcoming Michael Winterbottom film “A Mighty Heart”). What is rather more surprising is the standard of the work by Kal Penn as the son and by Tabu as the mother. Both are players who, previously unknown outside of Bollywood movies, emerge here with real credit. Indeed, I am tempted to say that “The Namesake” is something of a triumph for Tabu. Her role is far from easy since she starts the movie portraying a young woman of twenty three and is then asked to sustain and develop that character until at the close of the tale she has reached the age of forty eight. Any actress would find such demands daunting but Tabu carries it off splendidly. It is she who provides a firm centre for this ambitious and entertaining work.
“A considerable achievement, assured, moving, often very funny”
-Philip French, The Observer
“A probing examination of multiculturalism” – Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard.
“A very sensitive and polished piece of film-making, moving and finely acted.”
- Daily Telegraph.
Programme notes by Mansel Stimpson.
