The Namesake - A Personal Review

A story of an expatriate Indian, a story of the ties that bind, a story of love and longing – The Namesake is all this and then, some more. The film is an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s best selling novel of the same name. Mira Nair manages to tell the tale like it is her own.

The serious and emotion provoking, non episodic tale of the journey of Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima Ganguly (Tabu) is transformed into a fluid visual tale by the magic pen of Sooni Taraporevala, the screenplay writer for Mira Nair on all of her projects thus far.

The film is about the journey that Ashoke and Ashima Ganguly, the newly weds embark upon from the land they called home to a land of alien culture, strange colours – a place they would eventually learn to call home. The film is the progression of their relationship, from almost rank strangers to becoming all encompassing reference points for each other – an ironical closeness that they share because of being so far from all else they correspond to.

The film is about Ashoke’s elder son, Gogol Ganguly (Kal Penn) who is the namesake of the eccentric Russian genius Nikolai Gogol. It is his journey of losing himself in the maze of varying signposts of values and priorities until he, finally, finds himself and more, importantly, is at peace with what he becomes. The greatest journeys are the ones that bring you home.

Irrfan Khan gets under the skin of the character to the extent that the boundaries disappear. It no longer remains ‘acting’ and just becomes conviction. All the intense and to-be-savoured moments in the film are his. Tabu, as usual, blends in and never lets go the pulse of Ashima. She, slowly but surely, grows on you and becomes predictable like your next door neighbour. Kal Penn takes on the complicated role of the quintessential ‘gen next’ with élan. Even though, he seems to be on slippery ground at some points in time, but this hesitation only adds to his character’s ‘identity crisis’ further. The background score enhances the already rich texture of the film and the visual imagery, the stark and subtle differences in two parts of the world linked by the Gangulis is very well brought out.

But what hits home about the movie is that its not just a story about the NRI living away from home, it’s the story of all of us who have become islands of existence, cutting ourselves from the chords that bind, support and sustain.