dir: Mira Nair
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The Namesake focuses on the detail of a person’s life that must seem ridiculous from the point of view of people whose first and last names sound like two first names: the Paul Christophers, Robert Stanleys and Jane Allisons of this world. The unique pressures that arise from possessing a name that sounds strange to the ear and eye dependant upon the culture you reside within is only the most obvious issue that arises as part of the immigrant experience familiar to so many squllions of, uh, immigrants.
On top of that, though, the issue of name and identity gets even stickier for one of our protagonists here, because the name his parents bestowed upon him at birth is one that, transcending his background, he can never come to grips with.
Gogol (Kal Penn) is born to Bengali parents recently transplanted to the States. He grows up somewhat distanced from his family though not violently so. Mostly he seems to resent the fact that his dad called him Gogol.
Such a sweet sounding name. Although Gogol has inklings as to why his father chose the name, of course the flick has to take its time to tell him (and us) exactly how profoundly important the name is to his father.
He, however, resents it for most of his life.
His parents are nice enough people. Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and Ashima Ganguli (Tabu) meet and marry under the auspices of an arranged marriage back in Kolkata, but it’s not long before Ashoke, who is finishing his PhD in the States, brings his blushing bride to the cold climes of Brooklyn. In an amusing aside, Ashima comes to agree with the match before she even sees Ashoke based on the quality of his shoes.
She greets this new, cold world with resignation, but also with the determination to make a go of it and to bring up her kids right despite the distance from the people she loves back home.
It’s the usual immigrant-makes-good story that the whole history of immigrant-created countries like the US and like Australia are replete with. And the manner in which Gogol and his sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) rebel against their heritage is fairly tame. They don’t remain enmeshed with their parents post-adolescence, but they don’t exactly turn into lesbian separatists or Born Again Evangelical Christians either.
Ashoke gives his son a gift of the collected works of Nikolai Gogol, heavily implying its significance to him and the deep love he has for his son. Gogol, of course, accepts it like it is a three-pack of underwear covered in images of bumblebees. The father, choked up with emotion, again delays explaining to Gogol exactly what the big deal is with his name. So Gogol goes on resisting him and enduring his parents’ attentions
A trip to India allows for the family (and thus us) to get to hang out at Agra at the cliché but still impressive Taj Mahal, where Gogol decides on his career path, in indifferent defiance of his father’s hopes and dreams. Which is the way it should be. If I’d followed every hope and dream of my parentals I would have ended up married at 18 practicing law and medicine simultaneously, running a three story house full of squealing children probably in a place like Doncaster or Hoppers Crossing. Instead, well, here I am writing reviews…
Gogol especially seems to want to distance himself from his parent’s Bengali heritage as much as possible. Upon graduation, he changes his name to the more Western sounding Nikhil or Nick, studies architecture at Yale and gets a lovely whitebread girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett). His parents are distant figures that he avoids but not too strenuously. Of course they’re noble, long-suffering saints who just want what’s best for their children and make the rest of us in the audience feel guilty by default.
It’s manipulative in the extreme, but what can you do. If you’re not lucky enough to be an orphan, or to have had the kind of father who thinks good parenting is to drive a car with three sons as passengers into a dam as revenge against his ex-wife, then you’ve potentially known the misery of parental expectation. Gogol knows it, but makes peace with the fact that he’s never really going to connect with his parents that well, and that as long as he fulfils his obligations, they’ll mostly stay off his back.
Until, of course, he loses one of them, and then faces the crushing guilt that comes from having chosen to emotionally cut oneself off from one’s parents (unless there’s a really good reason to do it, like if your parent’s name is Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin or Britney Spears). With that loss comes the whole gamut of feelings and reactions, all of which serve as a lesson to Gogol about himself and his place in the worlds that he tries to live in.
Part of such a ‘journey’ leads to the mistaken belief that happiness will come from reverting back to tradition, custom, and the joys of conforming to the needs of the tribe. When it results in marriage, boy howdy do you have to pity the guy for ending up with the mutt that he does.
All in all, this is essentially a plain and simple family drama told over about a thirty year time span. The culture depicted is uniquely American and uniquely Bengali at the same time, as the parallels between life in Kolkata and New York are made explicit, emphasising the similarities rather than the differences in life for these people (and the rest of us). It’s not much different from any story you could have made about any people living the (Immigrant) American Dream who originate from Kazakhstan, Baluchistan or any other corner of the globe. The resonances, such as they are, are universal. For people with parents and such, I guess.
It’s not spectacularly remarkable, but there are elements that I can appreciate. The relationship between Ashoke and Ashima feels real, and doesn’t ever really veer into mawkish sentimentality. When they broach the subject of the feelings they have for each other, it’s expressed in understated ways that reinforce the bond between the husband and wife without making the audience (i.e. me) want to kill themselves.
Also strong is the usual, painful, ethnic mismatch Meet the Parents scenario where whitebread girl meets Indian parents for the first time. Gogol tells her beforehand to not be physically affectionate towards him, or anyone else for that matter, considering that it would be disrespectful in front of his parents. Having that eternal optimism of people who think they’re down with the multicultural masses, she completely ignores him, thinking it really won’t matter as long as everyone has an open-mind and tries to get along, man.
Of course it leads to some genially excruciating scenes as she just doesn’t get how different culturally they are, yet the parents take it with good grace. It brought a smile to my face.
It’s the only time I’ve seen Kal Penn in a serious dramatic role in a film (he is, after all, the Indian-American guy of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Van Wilder fame), and he generally makes a good fist of it. He would have to be able to relate to the character he’s playing, seeing as the age of the character and the American story of its protagonist can’t be too different from his own. After all, he uses the stage name Kal Penn instead of Kalpen Suresh Modi, which is the name his parentals gave him. I wonder why?
It keeps coming back to the name issue. It is only very late that Gogol isn’t embarrassed by his name, and even the very end before he bothers to find out what Gogol’s The Overcoat, the story his father always talks about but avoids explaining to him, is all about as well. We have a better idea, but it’s not even certain that we can grasp it in the way that Gogol (hopefully) eventually does. He does what he does well, and I especially liked it when he went berserk with the reversion to traditional Bengali son-like behaviour to honour his parents, too late, all too late.
It’s an understated, keenly observed flick that succeeds in its modest goals. I can’t recommend it highly enough to people who have to kill some time whilst watching a DVD with their parents. No swearing, no violence, no sex, no nudity. Though there is kissing, which I guess is enough to make some people want to burn down a cinema or two.
I can’t unrecommend it lowly enough to people expecting some nasty, visceral cinematic experience, to leave the audience raw after a few hours of familial flaying and fraying. It’s just not that kind of flick.
7 times I wonder why that brutish woman was cast as the potential Bengali wife out of 10
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“I despise American television.” – The Namesake
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