Cinema - The Namesake

The Namesake is a film by Mira Nair, the director of Monsoon Wedding and Bombay Salaam. An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, the movie is set largely in New York and follows the fortunes of a Bengali family who emigrate there, over the generation in which their son, Gogol, grows into manhood and beyond.
Funny name, Gogol. But not that funny if you are a second-generation immigrant trying to come to terms with the vast difference between street and home culture. As he grows up the young man increasingly rejects Bengali culture to embrace a Western lifestyle, feisty blonde girlfriend and all, and comes to resent the fact that his parents have given him such a playground-teasing-target for a moniker. How could they do that to him? There are, it turns out, special and very pertinent reasons, and learning them helps him to come to terms with the culture clash that has been at the root of his inner conflict his whole life through.
For its detractors, the film is an over-episodic, over-long affair, which doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts. For its champions, of which there are many, it is a powerful film, which stands up with Sanjit Ray’s classic Apu trilogy as it succeeds in moving cross-generational conflict within a Bengali family to a modern, Western setting. The eclectic soundtrack, which blends Bollywood disco with New York hip hop, is the perfect backdrop to the unravelling of Gogol’s cultural dilemma. DL