Desi Nation

The Namesake is full of wonders.

by Cindy Fuchs

Recommended

The Namesake begins at Calcutta's Howrah train station. Crowded and large, the place is full of travelers going in different directions. A young man, Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), barely notices the scene, his attention focused on a book of Gogol's short stories, including "The Overcoat." An older man encourages him to "see" the world: "You'll never regret it."

Read Cindy Fuchs' interview with director Mira Nair.  

"My grandfather said that's what books are for," Ashoke smiles. "To travel without moving an inch." Quiet and respectful, their exchange lasts only a minute or two. And then the train crashes.

In this moment, amid wreckage and noise, The Namesake begins again. Ashoke reappears, face bruised and body broken, newly determined to see the world he almost missed. In 1977, with a new Ph.D. in fiber optics, he heads to New York City to teach, bringing along his new wife, Ashima (Tabu), their marriage arranged and their futures uncertain.

Adapted by Sooni Taraporevala from Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, Mira Nair's movie is laced through with remarkable details — of color, gesture and understanding — moments at once metaphorical and explicit. As Ashoke and Ashima adjust to one another, the film shows their changing rhythms and growing closeness, initiated when she takes her husband's clothes to the laundromat, shrinking his favorite sweater to child's size. His upset soon becomes empathy when she locks herself in the bathroom, the full weight of their separate choices to move to a strange place with a stranger suddenly clear. When Ashima opens the door, they see each other anew.

Their mutual commitment expands with the birth of Gogol (Kal Penn), named after Ashoke's favorite writer. Growing up in the New York suburbs, Gogol's feelings about his name, his parents and Bengali traditions change repeatedly. The fact that his own major decisions are embodied by girls he loves — the exceedingly pale and rich Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a fellow student at Yale, and the "exotic" world traveler and fellow Bengali Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson) — is vaguely irksome, as they're more emblems of his thinking than full-on characters.

Still, the film is full of wonders, its attention to multiple generations refreshing and acute. When the family travels from New York to Calcutta and back again, they pass by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio's "Travelogues" installation at JFK. Holographic images transform depending on passersby's positions, such that dark-skinned figures become light and vice versa. Throughout the film, this point is made: Identities are fluid, perspectives change.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

The Namesake

Directed by Mira NairA Fox Searchlight release