I didn’t like this movie as much as I liked Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding. There was a sight seeing tour of the Taj Mahal and this seemed artificial, as if the director was telling the viewer something – and it was not her characters experiencing it. I just felt that the film reinforces the stereotypical image of Kolkata as a seamy city. I am not a film maker and don’t know whether this was possible without veering away from the novel. But Kolkata has its bright side and she could have shown the protagonist (who is from a lower middle class family) yearn for a better life by seeing the bright side of Kolkata…I don’t know. This has now been banned in Kolkata, but then ofcourse the story took place in the seventies and the rickshaws were very much there then. The only thing we see is Kolkata’s seamy side, the poverty, the grime, and human misery complete with rickshaws being pulled by human beings.
I wished Mira Nair had revealed the different side of Kolkata too however. The sex scenes make the film stand apart from a Bollywood movie.
I guess he paled in comparision to Tabu and Irfan Khan. Kal Penn plays Gogol and frankly I didn’t like him in the film. Brilliantly understated performances that convey a wide range of emotions – Tabu plays the role of the shy housewife who finds her wings and Irfan, a professor who is obsessed with a Russian author – Gogol, so obsessed in fact that he names his son after him (That is why the movie is called Namesake). The performances of Irfan Khan and Tabu (who play husband and wife) remain with you long after the movie is over. Its like seeing life unfold before you…only more vividly. Whether its a scene on a Kolkata street, or one in the United States, the ambience, the atmosphere, the scent of the people, everything is brought out so vividly…so perfectly. The movie moves slowly lovingly over each scene and the scenes are amazingly true to life. The fact that she can make the viewer laugh and cry with her characters, and that too just by the telling of a simple story reveals her brilliance. And she makes the viewer laugh too, just by showing normal family banter. A love which they never show to anyone else, or even to themselves…in fact what Nair reveals through her cinema is so profound that it moves one to tears.
She shows how love develops between husband and wife although when they marry they are strangers. The movie is about relationships – the relationship between husband and wife, brother and sister, child and parent, and its amazing that Mira Nair understands the deep bonds that Indian families share. So what is so special about the movie? Well, as Mira Nair unfolds the saga of the Ganguli family over two generations, she brilliantly brings out the clash of cultures between the east and west. Nothing dramatic happens, and the crises are normal family crises. Not just because it is directed by a woman of Indian origin, but also because the film (which is in English), tells the story about an Indian Bengali family who migrates to the US. The movie? Well, it is Hollywood movie with a Bollywood feel. The novel is by Jhumpa Lahiri, whose short story collection had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. The film is based on a novel of the same name.