It is a picture that I imagine many who read this blog have a variation of in one form or another. You know, that image of the the nuclear desi-American family– returned to the sub-Continent for a long (summer) vacation– of mom, dad, brother, sister posing in front of the Taj Mahal. The group is huddled close on that bench hoping for the perfect portrait. And really, how can the picture be bad? That grand marble monument towering in the background, its skewed reflection glimmering in the rectangular pond. Observing that familiar image reflected on the movie screen and understanding that feeling of closeness and comfort of being together in a foreign place, put a big smile on my face, as did most of Mira Nair’s latest film The Namesake.
I know we’ve previously blogged a review of the film, but this was a very personal book for me, I think for most of us. I even made my mom, who doesn’t usually read “English novels” read the book, and she loved it. So I think the movie merits more than just one review. In any case, I’ll do my best not to repeat too many of the things cicatrix mentioned earlier, and promise to stay away from the word timepass. The film was “just too good yar,” to merit the use of the word to describe it.
I find it hard to have high expectations for movies based on books. I have been burned too many times. With that in mind, my expectations for the movie were upward leaning, but not over reaching. I didn’t know how Nair could add visuals to a novel that was for me already so vivid. As the stunning opening credits blurred between Bengali and English, I immediately knew Lahiri’s story was in good hands. Nair and her longtime collaborator Sooni Taraporevala’s treatment stayed true to the novel while also providing an original point of view. Their take does a fine job of including the highlights of the book, but in their attempt to hit all the major points, the movie misses some of the extras that made the story so poignant. (Warning: Spoiler Alert, especially if you haven’t read the book)
The inclusion of the Ashima and Ashoke’s early years was good, but I wanted to see more of their early married life, more of Ashima’s struggle adjusting to life in America. To life without her family. To life without the familiar. I wanted to see her overcome that struggle, and grow into her life in America, as we saw in the novel. I think that is an important part of the story, and not spending enough time on some of these nuances took away from the story’s gravitas. The significance of the late night/early morning phone call for example, how was the audience supposed to know that odd-timed phone calls only meant significant news from India, usually bad?
Apparently the only surprise about Deepa Mehta’s Water losing out on the Best Foreign Film award last night was that the eventual winner wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth, the consensus favorite, but rather The Lives of Others, by an impossibly tall German director with an impossibly aristocratic Prussian name. So there’s little gnashing of teeth or rending of garments in the Indian press today, simply matter-of-fact recognition that “
