Namesake (movie): A Review
Namesake is the story of a Bengali-American family, seen from the eyes of Ashima Ganguli (Tabu) and Gogol (Nikhil) Ganguli (Kal Penn). Ashima gets married to someone she has met just once and comes with him to a foreign country, where she has no friends or family. In part, Namesake is her story. Gogol’s story is that of an American trying to make sense of his hyphenated reality: trying to balance the “Indian” and the “American” parts of being an “Indian-American”. In an attempt to tell both these stories, Mira Nair has managed to create a movie that shows shades of brilliance at times and at other times, barely manages to rise above a cliche (I know, I too can hurl cliches that I read in other cliched reviews of unrelated cliched movies… and I don’t even know what really makes a movie cliched :)).
My pet peeve with the movie revolved around the name Gogol. After making a big deal about the circumstances for naming the child ”Gogol”, it hardly seemed to have any bearing on the storyline. The child could as well have any other funny name and ths story would hardly change. Judging from the fact that my wife (who, unlike me, has read the novel) vehemently disagreed with this criticism, I believe there is much more to the name in the book than in the movie. I had read somewhere that if you introduce a sword in the first act of a play, you better use it by the end of the second act; namesake broke that cardinal rule.
And, BTW, who breaks up with one’s boyfriend at his father’s funeral on a seemingly frivolous reason? And who starts having second thoughts about her marriage because her husband dislikes her revealing to her friends that he has a funny name?
I think the movie would have been much better had Mira Nair stuck to telling the story from either Ashima’s or Gogol’s point of view.
Strange! I read good reviews about this movie. Probably it helps if you’ve read the book. But I agree, the name doesn’t really have to do much with the story apart from tossing the protagonist into a mental dilemma each time he tries to stick to an identity.
Its a decent movie. I would definitely recommend you watch it, if you haven’t done so already. Its just that there are several parts that are individually excellent, but the sum of these parts is underwhelming.
Overall, its a slow-paced movie… but then, there are parts which are just rushed through. Breakups don’t sound real because they just happen. Any time someone died in the movie, I could see it coming and point out the exact stereotypical way in which it will be handled.
Yes, coming to my pet peeve: you don’t build up an incidence as central to the theme of the movie and leave it just so. I think had the movie started from Ashima’s wedding, I would have found it to be excellent.
Still, I give it B+… its not a bad movie by any standards.
Still waiting for it to come out on DVD. Evansville theaters aren’t carrying it.
same here - awaiting DVD release. I did check out the soundtrack though - seemed quite good.