“I don’t want to raise him in this lonely country,†says Ashima (Tabu), soon after the birth of Gogol Ganguli in Mira Nair’s new movie The Namesake, opening in a limited release today. Based on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, the movie proves to be a remarkably faithful adaptation. Raise him here, of course, she does, but those words remain a rare break in her composure, a heartfelt expression of homesickness and fear.
For the record, I loved the book, and was rather nervous about how such a tender mood piece – thin on plot and crowded with sensitively drawn characters – could possibly translate onto film. The story of a young Bengali couple, strangers to each other, starting a life together in a foreign country, raising children who might grow up to be strangers to them in turn, vanishing, absorbed into the alien world… the frisson of recognition for almost any South Asian immigrant would be electric, right?
It certainly was to me, as I sat there trembling in my seat, watching the title credits scroll across the screen in a Bangla script that slowly faded to English lettering.
A hasty (not very spoiler-ish) summary:
Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) brings his new bride Ashima (Tabu) to New York (location change from book!) from Calcutta. She shrinks his sweaters in the wash, eats her breakfast cereal with peanuts and chili powder, and generally does the best she can to adapt to this cold new country. Their first son is nicknamed Gogol after Ashoke’s favorite author, a placeholder name as they wait for a “good name” to come from Ashima’s mother in India. This pet name, however, takes hold, at least until Gogol Ganguli (Kal Pen) decides in high school to change his name back to his good name – Nikhil. He grows up, becomes an architect, rebels against his parents by dating a wealthy white girl (Jacinda Barret), then falls for a Bengali girl (Zuleikha Robinson) and attempts to reconcile his two names, two identities.
Irfan Khan and Tabu deliver quiet, controlled, delicately nuanced performances that are simply breathtaking. Really, I’m going to embarrass myself by hemorraging inane adjectives. I could’ve sat for hours more, just watching them watch each other, paragraphs being telegraphed across a table. Tabu ages from a young girl secretly, gleefully, trying on her soon-to-be-fiancee’s wingtip shoes in Bengal, to a suburban librarian with an empty nest. Irfan Khan is almost unrecognizable as a bespectacled, scholarly man whose silences should not be mistaken for timidity.
Kal Pen finally gets a chance to stretch, and he seizes it eagerly, fiercely. Perhaps a little too much so. As a scowling teenager, boy does he scowl. As a conflicted young man trying to escape the claustrophobic embrace of his parents and their values…boy does he emote. When grief strikes and his values change…boy does he…well, let’s just say he’s intense. Eh, maybe I’m being too critical. He’s got bucketloads of charisma, and if he suffers by comparison to the actors playing his parents, it is, perhaps, not a fair comparison. His acting is very physical (the teenage years mean shoulders hunched about his ears, for example) but he still conveys a visceral feeling of unease in one’s skin, shame, and then a slowly dawning sense of pride and responsibility. It’s not his fault that I can’t get the indelible Kumar Patel out of my head.
Visually the movie is gorgeous, somehow combining both Mira Nair aesthetic extremes – the scrappy, jagged, raw feel of Monsoon Wedding and the lush set-piece look of The Kama Sutra and Vanity Fair. The cool blue tones of the Northeastern winters capture the loneliness and isolation vividly, as Ashima drags a handcart full of laundry down a grey sidewalk, vinyl-sided homes to the right of her, asphalt to the left, and she a lone spot of jewel-toned sari, valiantly fluttering beneath a thick cardigan. The India scenes are vivid but never feel forced as Gogol lectures his mother about riding in a rickshaw and his sister complains about the heat, capturing in a nutshell (more forthrightly than the book did, perhaps) the dual dislocation felt by the hyphenated children.
If the movie has a flaw, it stems from cramming as much of the book as possible into two hours. The result can seem rushed (Gogol decides to become an architect on a visit to see the Taj Mahal. Then, presto chango! He’s an architect in Manhattan) and choppy, while other moments are repeated (Ashoke’s train accident – i.e. why Gogol got that name, Ashima stepping into Ashoke’s footwear) for bang-you-over-the-head emphasis. The score can be a bit intrusive (I could feel a tender moment coming up every time the volume was raised on a particular plink…plink…plink…fluuuuuuuute musical motif), but it did give a great energy to necessary location shots and quick montages.
Packed with tiny details (the smile falters on Ashima’s face when Maxine greets her by her first name) and nods to first-gen lives (ducking mom’s phone calls, fake/ironic Bollywood dance steps), The Namesake gets so much right, the missteps seem minor. A small word of advice – carry your cell phone with you to the screening, because you will want to call your parents afterwards.
cicatrix: thanks for the review.. hopefully will open where i am this weekend, otherwise will watch it on dvd later on.
I’m really looking forward to this. British desi cinema is busted and has been for a long time.
i can’t wait– i’ll be sure to bring my phone!
I’m curious – Is Jhumpa a valid good name? I’ve never heard it and I wonder if that’s what inspired her partly. I know one Chunmun and one Tuktuk that got stuck with their home names but that was in India.
Nice review! It’s nice to be the first blog on the block with a review, sometimes.
Unfortunately this thing isn’t coming to Philly just yet, so I’ll have to visualize it through your description for a few weeks.
Sounds great – will have to grovel before techie friends to download this one off BitTorrent or something since I’ll probably never get to see it on the big screen.
The NYT review in its “explaining Indian customs” tone said something about how it can be years before an Indian child is named, “usually by the maternal grandmother.” It’s the first I’m hearing of this, is it a Bengali thing?
Great review – I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie for a long time! 🙂
I’m bengali, I never heard of it. I think all my grand parents gave suggestions on what name I shoud have. My maternal grandmother got it her way though.
Hmm. For us northies it’s usually the pandit who calculates the auspicious akshar the name should begin with and the parents choose though even that is pretty much ignored most of the time. Never known a kid who went years without a real name.
Really looking forward to this movie. Have read the book and being a bengali immigrant mom with a small kid I could identify with Tabu to some extent.
Yeah, that is good, subtle stuff.
Really excited to watch it.
The name “Jhumpa” is quite close to my own “dak-nam,” or nickname, which I zealously guard from outsiders. Do other South Asians use these family nicknames or is it just Bengalis? Perhaps she’s using her “dak-nam” as her pen name? I’m planning on seeing this movie with my parents in Berkeley later this month, but am a bit hesitant as I fear it might bring our family’s ever-present simmer of Bengali sentiment to a boil.
yeah, I’ve always thought my dak-nam was pretty cool, sort of like the brazilian soccerplayers equivalent of an artist name. I always sign emails with it, parents and girlfriends are allowed to use it.
wondering if ‘jhumpa’ was derived from ‘champa’ which is the name of a flower in hindi
Phew! You bring up a good issue here. A couple of years back I had a narrow escape when I missed a family get together in which all huddled around the TV and watched Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Ghum. My brother and sister reported back in excruciating detail how from start to finish everyone was in floods of tears at all the emotional blackmail of that stupid movie about father-son breakup and make up, with the stoical mother, prodigal son, daughter-in-law crisis etc. I refuse to watch those kinds of movies in front of my parents! It’s emotional blackmail on a large scale!
Today’s WallStreetJournal has praised Namesake to the skies. That’s good enough for me.
M. Nam
AThought Nothing like that 🙂 “Jhumpa”, “Tumpa”, “Roompa” etc. are very common “dak-nam” or pet names in bengali hosehold and for some it might go on to be the real name. Don’t give the meaning much thought, theres none
“There is a scene in the film when Ashima (Tabu) hears about her husband’s death,” he said. “At the Toronto International Film Festival, there was such a gasp I thought some people in the audience might faint.”
-Ronnie Screwvala,the executive producer of the film.(http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/mar/09ronnie.htm)
WOW!!
I agree with Sandeepa #17 about the passing ‘dak-nam’ that just sticks. I was talking to a friend of mine last night who said, “I didn’t like it very much (Namesake) but my husband loved it. Well, he grew up here so that’s probably why.” I have to say that I have come across this perspective elsewhere too. Personally, regardless of where I grew up, I found Lahiri’s portrayal of male adolescence a little off-the-mark. While the other characters resonated with me, I don’t think she can write about boys very well. But I await Namesake eagerly (and I scored free tickets to the Brattle theater in Cambridge!) because like the review says, the ‘look’ of the film is really exciting and the thought of watching a Bengali/Indian immigrant story in an expensively shot movie at a mall near me is heady. And as cicatrix noted, watching bangla on a big screen in this country must be a rush.
Actually Angry Asian Man beat it by a whisker. Both praised Irfan Khan and Tabu’s performance. Both ended the review on a similar note (calling parents). I tend to trust these reviews over mainstream pubs. Can’t wait to see it. This would be my first Kal Pen movie.
I thought she hit male adolesence perfectly. Resonated fine with me.
A small word of advice – carry your cell phone with you to the screening, because you will want to call your parents afterwards.
What if you are one of the scores of ABD thirty something men and women living at home, because they are recently “divorced without issue” or simply “going with the flow, trying to figure things out”? Would you STILL call right away, or would you wait until you got home, and lay on a mellow group hug?
Or go see it with your parents! 🙂
cicatrix, how did you get a chance to see the movie before the rest of us? it doesn’t even come to theaters till tonight. and it’ll be in NYC for the most part. i’m jealous.
impressive review btw.
Mallus can also have rather embarrassing “home-names” and quite often, as has been discussed here, even the public name of a Mallu can be quite weird. I know of people named Animate (girl) and Sleeby (boy). Great review, cicatrix. Makes me want to check it out soon.
I cry at commercials, so I definitely had myself a good cry at the movie. I loved the movie. I didn’t expect to like it b/c I loved the book. A nice surprise! I’m going to see it this weekend with my family and I’m sure I’ll be bawling.
Good to see Kal Penn branching out from playing the bumbling idiot or the terrorist.
Cicatrix,
Thanks for the great review! I’m really looking forward to this movie. I really loved the book as well. (Well, I loved it enough to read it four times!)
As for Jhumpa’s name…you can find interviews (on rediff, etc) that touch this subject. Jhumpa is her home name and she started using it, I think, because her schoolteachers couldn’t pronounce her regular name. “Jhumpa” was just easier for them and so it stuck. Incidentally, in one interview, she explains that she is also a fan of Nikolai Gogol.
Mitali,
I’m half Telugu and I have a family nickname. My sister gave it to me and she probably uses it the most. Although I happen to like my regular name, I really love having a nickname too. I don’t really know why, I just like it.
Aww…I loved Kal in Harold and Kumar. It’s hard to play funny. He was hysterical.
This is the theater list for this weekend:
NYC: Angelika Film Center (West Houston & Mercer St.) NYC: Paris Theatre (58th St. & Fifth Ave.) LA: Laemmle’s Santa Monica (1332 2nd St.) LA: Arclight Hollywood (6360 W. Sunset Blvd.) SF: Embarcadero Center Cinema (1 Embarcadero Center) Toronto: Cineplex Odeon Varsity Cinema (55 Bloor Street West)
The film will open on March 16 in Boston, Chicago, DC, Philly, San Jose, Seattle, and Vancouver in case you live in those places.
I loved him in Harold and Kumar but any movie after that was overkill of the bumbling idiot role.
Cic!
Beautiful review – I watched it last night in the comforts of UCLA surrounded by about 400+ UCLA desis (including a few of the Sepia Mutiny crowd which I hadn’t seen since the last meetup).
I think the great thing about watching the movie with a bunch of undergrads at Kal’s alma mater is the synchronized “sighs.” For instance, when Nitin Sawhney’s name came up as the music director, or when there was the State of Bengal song was in the background. My favorite mutual sigh was when the white chick wore black to the funeral and took off her jacket to reveal a very sleeveless and cleavagy dress. There was a very loud ‘oh no she didn’t’ murmur that would have made all of our parents proud. And of course, so subtle that non-desis would not have caught it.
I didn’t like the book because it was so character driven (I need stories with plots) but I thought this movie was fabulously beautiful and breathtaking. Better then the book, while staying true to Lahiri’s essence. Like Cic alluded, Kal was just ok, but it may be because he was sharing the screen with such mega-stars.
Enough gushing. Loved it. I can’t wait to take my mom to watch it.
“Jhumpa” was just easier for them and so it stuck. Incidentally, in one interview, she explains that she is also a fan of Nikolai Gogol.
Yes, I wrote about this back when I first read the novel. Here’s the excerpt from my post that relates to Gogol’s story “The Overcoat,” which is kind of a point of inspiration for her novel:
There are a number of interesting and provocative parallels to Gogol’s “The Overcoat†in The Namesake – especially regarding the odd status of names and naming in Gogol’s story. Gogol’s protagonist has a surreal name himself – Akaky Akakyevich (the latter means, son of Akaky), which suggests a kind of parthenogenetic birth, without history or family. Gogol refuses to name the office where Akaky works (“In the department of … but it is better not to name the department.â€). In that the story toys with anonymity, with the prospect of namelessness, it is a perfect reference point for Lahiri’s story about the strangeness of the Indian immigrant experience in the United States.
Really, the child of immigrants begins in a kind of nowhere place. She is firmly of America, but is not quite an American, in part because she is not recognized as such by others. The child may have privileges — access to education, significant mobility – but she still has to first discover and then adapt to American values and life-concepts, which are firmly resisted at home. She can buy herself the appropriate overcoat, but it will not be cheap, and it can always be stolen. Overcoats can be purchased, but it is difficult to change the fact that the city remains cold.
For people who are interested in the connection to the real Gogol, try reading the short story “The Overcoat,” here.
I see it’s not opening in Chicago until next Friday, so I’ll have to wait a week. I’ve already read the book so the plot isn’t a huge suprise to me, but I am excited to see how many great reviews it’s getting. I for one hated the book with a passion; I thought the portrayal of the family dynamic and the parents (especially Ashima) was pretty weak, and the change in Gogol wasn’t that convincing to me. I can’t even explain why but I was sort of offended on behalf of my parents after reading this book, I had to force myself to finish it. Cica, from what you’re saying Mira Nair did a great job fleshing out Ashima and Ashok. And of course, I love Kal Penn (how can you not, after Harold and Kumar?) so I am super-psyched to see the movie.
Penn may be a promising actor, but he needs to come up with better interview material. Rehashing “monkey brains” time after time gets tiresome.
Holy smoke! It occurred to me as a ‘funny name’, till I ‘rationalized’ it as the ‘Bengali form’ of ‘Champa’. Is that not true? Total tangent of course, but I’ve known lots of Bengalis who go by their ‘dak-naam’ in real life – Tuk-Tuk and Mun-Mun are two I can think of right away.
Does anyone have any idea if/when this movie is being shown in the DC Metro area?
Not that I’ve seen the movie yet (tried to go a screening in New York only to be greeted by a line wrapping around the block…an hour before it was supposed to start.) but is anyone else off put by the portrayal of Moushumi in the trailer? She seems so over the top sex, which just wasn’t how I pictured her at all. i thought she’d be a grown up version of her younger self, more confident and comfortable with her sexuality but not like, screaming “SEX” through lipsticked cigarette puffs.
Lahiri and Nair will be speaking together tomorrow at the NYPL. I see taht it’s soldout but tix might open up. Many visual/literary artists disappoint in person, but not Mira Nair. Seeing her fend off silly questions from audiences is as great as most of her work.
At the risk of sounding like an idiot…how, exactly is “Jhumpa” pronounced. Is it a soft “j” (as in “yumpa”), or it is more like je suis? I’ve heard it both ways, I just want to get it right.
Do other South Asians use these family nicknames or is it just Bengalis?
I’m a gujju jain, have a nickname for friends and family (Pinky) and Real name(Dharti) 🙂
I’m glad to see that Kalpen Modi will be getting (another) role where he can add dimention and emotion to the character rather than just a stereotype (Taj.) I also liked him as a supporting character in American Desi. Really looking forward to the movie though. Great review Cicatrix. Now I’m more interested in seeing it. Always a little wary of movies made after books – I get so attatched.
Hey SemiDesiMasala,
I’ve always heard it pronounced with a hard j like in jump. That’s how it comes out when playing with a little kid, at least, and that’s how pet names usually start, right? 🙂 BTW, as for the book, was it as compelling as the short story she published in the New Yorker titled Gogol a few years ago, right before the book came out? I really liked that.
Kurma,
Those names are funny and kind of cute. I know an aunty called Lousy (I think it’s supposed to be pronounced Lucy) and 3 Baby Auntys (who have grandbabies now too!)
After seeing the freeze publicity shot (above) of the family at the Taj Mahal, I rushed to my photo album to find an identical pic of my parents and sister standing in almost the same spot in the same pose sometime in 197..err something. It was too moving to see my mother standing so young in a sari with the same faraway look in her eyes that Tabu has. Can’t wait to see the movie.
Just found an article that explains the pronunciation of her name as “Zoompa.”
You can read it here: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040328/ai_n12752954
lahiri has stated in interviews that “jumpha” is her dak-nam, and other bengalis sometimes rebuke her for using it as her proper name. fwiw, “rajib” is my dak-nam (i had another one ’till i was three, “thoheen”). in k-5 my teacher turned it to “razib.”
“British desi cinema is busted and has been for a long time.”
Bastids! How dare you insult us Brits like that 🙁
BC, me too! I’ve seen it twice so far, but when the trailer came up at the cinema a few weeks back, i started getting a lump in my throat.
Once it’s in wider release in NY, I’m taking my mother…
I saw Irfan Khan and Tabu at an event in NYC last night and had forgotten how tall she is, and didn’t realize how tall he is too. Given the height of both of them together, they just look medium height on the film, but in person, wow, he really towers over you!
is anyone else off put by the portrayal of Moushumi in the trailer?
I had a hard time seeing the trailer soon after finishing the book last summer. Neither Kal Penn nor Zuleikha Robinson are what I imagined when I was reading the book — but that is so often the case with literary adaptations, and I can probably get over it. It’s just so hard sometimes when you have got your own idea in your head of what all these characters are like, and then see them realized on screen differently. When I see Robinson in the trailer, all I can think is “Paula Abdul” for some reason. Anyway, I’m still looking forward to the movie in a big way, and I’m glad most here seem to have really liked it.
Awwww, Tazzy girl, I wish I were in LA. In fact, I shoulda just gone to school at UCLA. How cool is it that UCLA can put on a screening of the film before it hit theatres and have 400 desi kids show up? I’m jealous. I’m not going to get it in Santa Barbara anytime soon 🙁
Hater on heteronormative Refreshingly respectful comments below. A certain ten-dollar word gets the clowning it deserves. Makes you almost forgive the usual Gandhi typo. Or not. Ghandi? Really? And they wonder why our kids do well at spelling bees.