THE NAMESAKE

a film review by Malik Isasis

















On Saturday evening the weather was pretty miserable. Raining and cold, this is typical winter weather in Seattle, so I thought that I’d stay in and try to write. I sat for what seemed like an eternity in front of my computer screen, rereading and rewriting the same two paragraphs of some fictional work over and over again. This wasn’t working. I had no inspiration. No big deal, par for the course as they say. This is the life of a writer.

My phone rang. It was my friend Wazhma. She was calling to check in—is what she said, I say she was bored.

“I was calling to see what was up with you. Check in.” She said.

“I’m writing…trying to write. It’s more like I’m sitting on my ass, staring at my monitor.” I said.

“Anything exciting going on with you?” She asked. She asks me this question a lot, and I always feel obliged to say something fantastical, but I usually respond by saying, “No, things are pretty unremarkable since last we spoke. I’m still trying to make sense of my life.”

Eventually Wazhma got down to the crux of why she was calling.

“I was thinking I wanted to see a movie. There’s a South Asian Women’s Film Festival going, and I wanted to see the documentary, The Beauty Academy of Kabul.

Wazhma is originally from Afghanistan, born and raised part of her life in Kabul as a matter of fact.

“It starts at 7:30pm.”

I looked over at the clock: 8:15 PM.

“It’s like 8:15. I think you missed that one.” I said.

“I know. It’s been like this all day. Everything that I wanted to do, I missed out on because it’s just one of those days. I still want to see something.”

I suggested the film, The Namesake. The next screening was starting at 9:45pm and it was already 8:50, raining, and Saint Paddy’s Day. Traffic was miserable.

En Route to the theatre, Wazhma received a phone call.

“I got to take this, it’s my dad.” She answered the phone. After a moment she said into the phone.

“Dad, I’m sorry but I’m heading in the opposite direction. I’m heading north. If you’ve told me earlier, I would’ve been able to meet up with you…okay, bye.”

“Everything’s okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s at the airport. His plane was delayed for an hour and he wanted me to come down and hang out with him for about 45 minutes.”

“Aww, that’s sweet.”

“He’s just bored—wants to kill some time.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess.” She said.

Okay, alright…on with the film review

Mira Niar’s 2001 film, Monsoon Wedding dealt with familial strife, deep dark secrets like molestation, a young Indian-American man who is cuckolded even before he exchanges vows that would bring his would-be bride to America. Nair is not afraid to air some dirty laundry. One does not go to Nair’s films for escapism; you must be prepared to do some work. Her stories are usually not so much plot driven, as they are character studies and personal journeys. Her overarching themes in most of her films deals with transitioning from South Asian culture to Western culture, and the sometimes-costly effects of assimilation on the different generations. This was a theme in her 1991 film Mississippi Masala concerning the transitioning of an Indian man’s love for his native Uganda and the realization that he can no longer go back home.

The thread of intercontinental transition picks up where Monsoon Wedding left off.

Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), a meek young man hiding behind a huge pair of glasses, lies comfortably in a bunk in a dilapidated train, reading a novel by one of his favorite Russian novelist, Nikolai Gogol. It is 1974 and Ashoke is a student in Calcutta. As he tries to read an older gentlemen engages him in conversation about life in between swigs from his metal flask. The older gentleman, somewhat sauced, encourages Ashoke to get away from the books and travel, see the world.

Ashima (Tabu) is a young singer whose parents have been grooming her for marriage for what seems like most of her life. Just as a side note. The actress Tabu is a beautiful, full-figured woman with that je ne sais quois. It is hard to take your eyes off of her when she is on the screen. However, she transcends her beauty to render an emotionally present character with depth, dignity and vulnerability. When the young scholar Ashoke, now living in America, comes to the home of Ashima in India, we see their parents negotiating as if the two were cattle.

Ashima who’d turned down dozens of proposals, was sure she would this one. She told her young sister to watch and take note. She leaves her bedroom and on the way comes across Ashoke’s shoes near the door. She studies them for a moment, reading “Made in America” in the inner soles. Today it would read made in China, or Mexico, but I digress. She slides her feet into the shoes and walks around in them. It is at this moment, even without seeing him, she decides that she would accept this proposal.

The young couple leaves India for New York City, where it is dead of winter. Ashima is miserably homesick and is overwhelmed by her new surroundings. She writes home that one can get gas 24 hours a day, you do not have to boil the water and there is hot and cold water in the bath. In one scene that is both funny and heart breaking, Ashima fixes herself breakfast. A bowl of cereal, Rice Crispies. In an effort for comfort, she spoons a nice helping of red curry powder and nuts into the bowl of dry cereal and munches away.

It is winter in New York and Ashoke and Ashima are strangers in a strange land. They aren’t even friends, just a possibility. It is the coldness and the foreign culture, which brings them physically closer, and results in the conception of their son, Gogol Ganguli (Kal Penn).

While in the hospital, a hospital administrator stops by the room with paperwork stating that he needs the name of the baby for the birth certificate, without it the baby cannot be discharged from the hospital. The couple explains to the bureaucrat that they have to await a letter from the baby’s grandmother with the boy’s name. They ask if they could use a temporary name until the name arrives. The bureaucrat naturally rejects the idea. Ashoke and Ashima then gives the baby the temporary name of Gogol. At the age of four, young Gogol decides that he wants his temp name, Gogol, permanently. The name Gogol would haunt the young boy throughout his formative years. This would change as Gogol goes through four years of the American Baptism known as high school.

The couple also has a daughter Sonia, shortly after Gogol who’s played by Ms Nair’s own daughter, Sahira Nair.

The couple takes the kids back home to visit family and the Taj Mahal. It is in this particular moment that we see Ashoke and Ashima stare at each other with the deepest kind of love. There are no words necessary. This is another moving moment.

The story shifts focus from Ashoke and Ashima, to Gogol, who now is a professional architect and has changed his name to his permanent name, Nehil, in which he was warned would be bastardized into Nick. Nick’s assimilation is fully complete with an attractive white girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett) and the distancing from his culture and his parents, which is most heartbreaking after spending so much time with the parents.

Ashoke is the type of father I would have loved to have growing up. He was a man with great dignity and wisdom in his quiet advice. Everything that he did was in the service of his family. He was a gentle soul. He was graceful. He is the type of father I would like to be if I had children. Nair has a gift for these archetypes. In Mississippi Masala and in Monsoon Wedding, the fathers were all very vulnerable men who were not afraid of expressing their fears and pain to their wives. They weren't afraid to need their wives. Rarely is this trait portrayed in men in American cinematheque.

Although the movie runs at two hours and two minutes, many aspects of the film are rushed like Gogol’s girlfriend Maxine and his subsequent Indian wife, Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), even Gogol’s development and self-actualization. Ashoke and Ashima were so breathtakingly realized that supporting characters seemed thinly sketched.

The Namesake to me was about regret, missing opportunities, but redemption through being in the moment with those you love.

Movies to me are about moments, and this film has many moments. I measure films by how much they make me reflect. How long they stay with me long after leaving the theatre. This film made me think briefly of Wazhma’s father who, only a couple of hours before called up his daughter and asked to spend some time with her as he awaited for his plane to depart from the airport. It made me think of my own father, whom I never knew. It also made think of what type of father I would like to be.


GRADE: B

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