Assimilation nation

>> Mira Nair’s The Namesake is a cross-generational tale of culture clash

FAMILY UNDER PRESSURE: The Namesake

by MATTHEW HAYS

The pressures of assimilation on immigrants and their children have proven rich ground for filmmakers, but most recently this topic has generated a primarily upbeat string of “feel good” films (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Mambo Italiano, Bend It Like Beckham) in which families manage to blend in relative harmony.

With The Namesake, filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) manages to bring more nuance to the topic. Based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, the film opens as a marriage is being arranged by two young Indians (played by Irfan Khan and single-monickered Tabu). After getting hitched, Khan takes his bride back to New York, where she has some trouble adjusting to her newfound life of cold weather and laundromats. They have two children, a boy and a girl. The film then focuses primarily on the life of their lad, who resents that his father named him after Gogol, the crazy but brilliant Russian scribe.

When The Namesake opened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, it received some mixed reviews, with critics citing it as an example of an adaptation that doesn’t precisely work. But I would argue that Nair has made a beautiful film, one that follows the book closely, and does not pander to the average, standard expectations of a multiplex audience. There are a great many quiet, beautiful moments in this film, the entire feature lifted by the strong cast—especially Kal Penn, a comic actor (who takes a serious turn here and who plays Gogol).

As Gogol becomes a young man, he is caught between feeling rather embarrassed about his parents’ old-school ways and the allure of the family life of his aristocratic girlfriend, a pretty white blonde (Jacinda Barrett). The tug many children of immigrants feel is perfectly illustrated, with Nair capturing all of the anguish beautifully.

There is one strange thing about The Namesake: For a film made by a woman, based on a book by a woman, the female characters are strangely under-developed. I kept hoping to see more detail about Mom’s life, or to learn much more about the pressures of assimilation and how they manifested themselves in the life of the sister. No such luck. An imperfect, but still very worthwhile page-to-screen adaptation.

The Namesake opens Friday, March 23

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