Film Reviews Issue #31

The Namesake

By Sarah Sundberg
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

The Namesake
Directed by Mira Nair

Many people will likely expect a lot from The Namesake, given the popularity of the Jhumpa Lahiri novel it’s based on. Director Mira Nair does more than just capture the essence of Lahiri’s narrative: it is hard to believe the book wasn’t originally written to end up as a Nair film.

The story of two generations of the Ganguli family, The Namesake opens during the early days of marriage between Ashoke (Irfan Kahn) and Ashima (Tabu), a young Bengali couple who move to the United States and eventually make a comfortable home for themselves in suburbia.

Their American-born son Gogol is played by the perfectly cast Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame. Saddled with the name of a Russian author he doesn’t even like, Gogol renames himself Nikhil — the sort of easily shortened name he believes American society expects of him — before setting off for Yale and adulthood. The Namesake touches upon themes familiar from Mississippi Masala and other Nair films: living between homelands and dealing with the expectations and longings we all inherit from our parents. It would be easy to stoop to clichés here but neither Lahiri nor Nair are given to delivering pat answers to life’s problems. The cast’s rock-solid work also contributes to the film’s overall depth and nuance, making The Namesake an absorbing look at what it means to make a life for oneself and find personal contentment and independence.