March 09, 2007
The Namesake - ReviewFilm
“I don’t want to raise him in this lonely country,” says Ashima (Tabu), soon after the birth of Gogol Ganguli in Mira Nair’s new movie The Namesake, opening in a limited release today. Based on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, the movie proves to be a remarkably faithful adaptation. Raise him here, of course, she does, but those words remain a rare break in her composure, a heartfelt expression of homesickness and fear.
For the record, I loved the book, and was rather nervous about how such a tender mood piece - thin on plot and crowded with sensitively drawn characters - could possibly translate onto film. The story of a young Bengali couple, strangers to each other, starting a life together in a foreign country, raising children who might grow up to be strangers to them in turn, vanishing, absorbed into the alien world… the frisson of recognition for almost any South Asian immigrant would be electric, right?
It certainly was to me, as I sat there trembling in my seat, watching the title credits scroll across the screen in a Bangla script that slowly faded to English lettering.
A hasty (not very spoiler-ish) summary:
Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) brings his new bride Ashima (Tabu) to New York (location change from book!) from Calcutta. She shrinks his sweaters in the wash, eats her breakfast cereal with peanuts and chili powder, and generally does the best she can to adapt to this cold new country. Their first son is nicknamed Gogol after Ashoke’s favorite author, a placeholder name as they wait for a “good name” to come from Ashima’s mother in India. This pet name, however, takes hold, at least until Gogol Ganguli (Kal Pen) decides in high school to change his name back to his good name - Nikhil. He grows up, becomes an architect, rebels against his parents by dating a wealthy white girl (Jacinda Barret), then falls for a Bengali girl (Zuleikha Robinson) and attempts to reconcile his two names, two identities.
Irfan Khan and Tabu deliver quiet, controlled, delicately nuanced performances that are simply breathtaking. Really, I’m going to embarrass myself by hemorraging inane adjectives. I could’ve sat for hours more, just watching them watch each other, paragraphs being telegraphed across a table. Tabu ages from a young girl secretly, gleefully, trying on her soon-to-be-fiancee’s wingtip shoes in Bengal, to a suburban librarian with an empty nest. Irfan Khan is almost unrecognizable as a bespectacled, scholarly man whose silences should not be mistaken for timidity.
Kal Pen finally gets a chance to stretch, and he seizes it eagerly, fiercely. Perhaps a little too much so. As a scowling teenager, boy does he scowl. As a conflicted young man trying to escape the claustrophobic embrace of his parents and their values…boy does he emote. When grief strikes and his values change…boy does he…well, let’s just say he’s intense. Eh, maybe I’m being too critical. He’s got bucketloads of charisma, and if he suffers by comparison to the actors playing his parents, it is, perhaps, not a fair comparison. His acting is very physical (the teenage years mean shoulders hunched about his ears, for example) but he still conveys a visceral feeling of unease in one’s skin, shame, and then a slowly dawning sense of pride and responsibility. It’s not his fault that I can’t get the indelible Kumar Patel out of my head.
Visually the movie is gorgeous, somehow combining both Mira Nair aesthetic extremes - the scrappy, jagged, raw feel of Monsoon Wedding and the lush set-piece look of The Kama Sutra and Vanity Fair. The cool blue tones of the Northeastern winters capture the loneliness and isolation vividly, as Ashima drags a handcart full of laundry down a grey sidewalk, vinyl-sided homes to the right of her, asphalt to the left, and she a lone spot of jewel-toned sari, valiantly fluttering beneath a thick cardigan. The India scenes are vivid but never feel forced as Gogol lectures his mother about riding in a rickshaw and his sister complains about the heat, capturing in a nutshell (more forthrightly than the book did, perhaps) the dual dislocation felt by the hyphenated children.
If the movie has a flaw, it stems from cramming as much of the book as possible into two hours. The result can seem rushed (Gogol decides to become an architect on a visit to see the Taj Mahal. Then, presto chango! He’s an architect in Manhattan) and choppy, while other moments are repeated (Ashoke’s train accident - i.e. why Gogol got that name, Ashima stepping into Ashoke’s footwear) for bang-you-over-the-head emphasis. The score can be a bit intrusive (I could feel a tender moment coming up every time the volume was raised on a particular plink…plink…plink…fluuuuuuuute musical motif), but it did give a great energy to necessary location shots and quick montages.
Packed with tiny details (the smile falters on Ashima’s face when Maxine greets her by her first name) and nods to first-gen lives (ducking mom’s phone calls, fake/ironic Bollywood dance steps), The Namesake gets so much right, the missteps seem minor. A small word of advice - carry your cell phone with you to the screening, because you will want to call your parents afterwards.
cicatrix on March 9, 2007 05:00 AM in Film · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
cicatrix: thanks for the review.. hopefully will open where i am this weekend, otherwise will watch it on dvd later on.
I'm really looking forward to this. British desi cinema is busted and has been for a long time.
i can't wait-- i'll be sure to bring my phone!
I'm curious - Is Jhumpa a valid good name? I've never heard it and I wonder if that's what inspired her partly. I know one Chunmun and one Tuktuk that got stuck with their home names but that was in India.
Nice review! It's nice to be the first blog on the block with a review, sometimes.
Unfortunately this thing isn't coming to Philly just yet, so I'll have to visualize it through your description for a few weeks.
Sounds great - will have to grovel before techie friends to download this one off BitTorrent or something since I'll probably never get to see it on the big screen.
The NYT review in its "explaining Indian customs" tone said something about how it can be years before an Indian child is named, "usually by the maternal grandmother." It's the first I'm hearing of this, is it a Bengali thing?
Great review - I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a long time! :)
I'm bengali, I never heard of it. I think all my grand parents gave suggestions on what name I shoud have. My maternal grandmother got it her way though.
Hmm. For us northies it's usually the pandit who calculates the auspicious akshar the name should begin with and the parents choose though even that is pretty much ignored most of the time. Never known a kid who went years without a real name.
Really looking forward to this movie. Have read the book and being a bengali immigrant mom with a small kid I could identify with Tabu to some extent.
Yeah, that is good, subtle stuff.
Really excited to watch it.
The name "Jhumpa" is quite close to my own "dak-nam," or nickname, which I zealously guard from outsiders. Do other South Asians use these family nicknames or is it just Bengalis? Perhaps she's using her "dak-nam" as her pen name? I'm planning on seeing this movie with my parents in Berkeley later this month, but am a bit hesitant as I fear it might bring our family's ever-present simmer of Bengali sentiment to a boil.
yeah, I've always thought my dak-nam was pretty cool, sort of like the brazilian soccerplayers equivalent of an artist name. I always sign emails with it, parents and girlfriends are allowed to use it.
wondering if 'jhumpa' was derived from 'champa' which is the name of a flower in hindi
Phew! You bring up a good issue here. A couple of years back I had a narrow escape when I missed a family get together in which all huddled around the TV and watched Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Ghum. My brother and sister reported back in excruciating detail how from start to finish everyone was in floods of tears at all the emotional blackmail of that stupid movie about father-son breakup and make up, with the stoical mother, prodigal son, daughter-in-law crisis etc. I refuse to watch those kinds of movies in front of my parents! It's emotional blackmail on a large scale!
Today's WallStreetJournal has praised Namesake to the skies. That's good enough for me.
M. Nam
AThought
Nothing like that :) "Jhumpa", "Tumpa", "Roompa" etc. are very common "dak-nam" or pet names in bengali hosehold and for some it might go on to be the real name. Don't give the meaning much thought, theres none
"There is a scene in the film when Ashima (Tabu) hears about her husband's death," he said. "At the Toronto International Film Festival, there was such a gasp I thought some people in the audience might faint."
-Ronnie Screwvala,the executive producer of the film.(http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/mar/09ronnie.htm)
WOW!!
I agree with Sandeepa #17 about the passing 'dak-nam' that just sticks. I was talking to a friend of mine last night who said, "I didn't like it very much (Namesake) but my husband loved it. Well, he grew up here so that's probably why." I have to say that I have come across this perspective elsewhere too. Personally, regardless of where I grew up, I found Lahiri's portrayal of male adolescence a little off-the-mark. While the other characters resonated with me, I don't think she can write about boys very well. But I await Namesake eagerly (and I scored free tickets to the Brattle theater in Cambridge!) because like the review says, the 'look' of the film is really exciting and the thought of watching a Bengali/Indian immigrant story in an expensively shot movie at a mall near me is heady. And as cicatrix noted, watching bangla on a big screen in this country must be a rush.
I thought she hit male adolesence perfectly. Resonated fine with me.
A small word of advice - carry your cell phone with you to the screening, because you will want to call your parents afterwards.
What if you are one of the scores of ABD thirty something men and women living at home, because they are recently "divorced without issue" or simply "going with the flow, trying to figure things out"? Would you STILL call right away, or would you wait until you got home, and lay on a mellow group hug?
cicatrix, how did you get a chance to see the movie before the rest of us? it doesn't even come to theaters till tonight. and it'll be in NYC for the most part. i'm jealous.
impressive review btw.
Mallus can also have rather embarrassing "home-names" and quite often, as has been discussed here, even the public name of a Mallu can be quite weird. I know of people named Animate (girl) and Sleeby (boy). Great review, cicatrix. Makes me want to check it out soon.
I cry at commercials, so I definitely had myself a good cry at the movie. I loved the movie. I didn't expect to like it b/c I loved the book. A nice surprise! I'm going to see it this weekend with my family and I'm sure I'll be bawling.
Good to see Kal Penn branching out from playing the bumbling idiot or the terrorist.
Cicatrix,
Thanks for the great review! I'm really looking forward to this movie. I really loved the book as well. (Well, I loved it enough to read it four times!)
As for Jhumpa's name...you can find interviews (on rediff, etc) that touch this subject. Jhumpa is her home name and she started using it, I think, because her schoolteachers couldn't pronounce her regular name. "Jhumpa" was just easier for them and so it stuck. Incidentally, in one interview, she explains that she is also a fan of Nikolai Gogol.
Mitali,
I'm half Telugu and I have a family nickname. My sister gave it to me and she probably uses it the most. Although I happen to like my regular name, I really love having a nickname too. I don't really know why, I just like it.
Aww...I loved Kal in Harold and Kumar. It's hard to play funny. He was hysterical.
This is the theater list for this weekend:
NYC: Angelika Film Center (West Houston & Mercer St.)
NYC: Paris Theatre (58th St. & Fifth Ave.)
LA: Laemmle’s Santa Monica (1332 2nd St.)
LA: Arclight Hollywood (6360 W. Sunset Blvd.)
SF: Embarcadero Center Cinema (1 Embarcadero Center)
Toronto: Cineplex Odeon Varsity Cinema (55 Bloor Street West)
The film will open on March 16 in Boston, Chicago, DC, Philly, San Jose, Seattle, and Vancouver in case you live in those places.
I loved him in Harold and Kumar but any movie after that was overkill of the bumbling idiot role.
Cic!
Beautiful review - I watched it last night in the comforts of UCLA surrounded by about 400+ UCLA desis (including a few of the Sepia Mutiny crowd which I hadn't seen since the last meetup).
I think the great thing about watching the movie with a bunch of undergrads at Kal's alma mater is the synchronized "sighs." For instance, when Nitin Sawhney's name came up as the music director, or when there was the State of Bengal song was in the background. My favorite mutual sigh was when the white chick wore black to the funeral and took off her jacket to reveal a very sleeveless and cleavagy dress. There was a very loud 'oh no she didn't' murmur that would have made all of our parents proud. And of course, so subtle that non-desis would not have caught it.
I didn't like the book because it was so character driven (I need stories with plots) but I thought this movie was fabulously beautiful and breathtaking. Better then the book, while staying true to Lahiri's essence. Like Cic alluded, Kal was just ok, but it may be because he was sharing the screen with such mega-stars.
Enough gushing. Loved it. I can't wait to take my mom to watch it.
"Jhumpa" was just easier for them and so it stuck. Incidentally, in one interview, she explains that she is also a fan of Nikolai Gogol.
Yes, I wrote about this back when I first read the novel. Here's the excerpt from my post that relates to Gogol's story "The Overcoat," which is kind of a point of inspiration for her novel:
There are a number of interesting and provocative parallels to Gogol’s “The Overcoat” in The Namesake – especially regarding the odd status of names and naming in Gogol’s story. Gogol’s protagonist has a surreal name himself – Akaky Akakyevich (the latter means, son of Akaky), which suggests a kind of parthenogenetic birth, without history or family. Gogol refuses to name the office where Akaky works (“In the department of … but it is better not to name the department.”). In that the story toys with anonymity, with the prospect of namelessness, it is a perfect reference point for Lahiri’s story about the strangeness of the Indian immigrant experience in the United States.
Really, the child of immigrants begins in a kind of nowhere place. She is firmly of America, but is not quite an American, in part because she is not recognized as such by others. The child may have privileges -- access to education, significant mobility – but she still has to first discover and then adapt to American values and life-concepts, which are firmly resisted at home. She can buy herself the appropriate overcoat, but it will not be cheap, and it can always be stolen. Overcoats can be purchased, but it is difficult to change the fact that the city remains cold.
For people who are interested in the connection to the real Gogol, try reading the short story "The Overcoat," here.
I see it's not opening in Chicago until next Friday, so I'll have to wait a week. I've already read the book so the plot isn't a huge suprise to me, but I am excited to see how many great reviews it's getting. I for one hated the book with a passion; I thought the portrayal of the family dynamic and the parents (especially Ashima) was pretty weak, and the change in Gogol wasn't that convincing to me. I can't even explain why but I was sort of offended on behalf of my parents after reading this book, I had to force myself to finish it. Cica, from what you're saying Mira Nair did a great job fleshing out Ashima and Ashok. And of course, I love Kal Penn (how can you not, after Harold and Kumar?) so I am super-psyched to see the movie.
Penn may be a promising actor, but he needs to come up with better interview material. Rehashing "monkey brains" time after time gets tiresome.
Holy smoke! It occurred to me as a 'funny name', till I 'rationalized' it as the 'Bengali form' of 'Champa'. Is that not true? Total tangent of course, but I've known lots of Bengalis who go by their 'dak-naam' in real life - Tuk-Tuk and Mun-Mun are two I can think of right away.
Does anyone have any idea if/when this movie is being shown in the DC Metro area?
Not that I've seen the movie yet (tried to go a screening in New York only to be greeted by a line wrapping around the block...an hour before it was supposed to start.) but is anyone else off put by the portrayal of Moushumi in the trailer? She seems so over the top sex, which just wasn't how I pictured her at all. i thought she'd be a grown up version of her younger self, more confident and comfortable with her sexuality but not like, screaming "SEX" through lipsticked cigarette puffs.
Lahiri and Nair will be speaking together tomorrow at the NYPL. I see taht it's soldout but tix might open up. Many visual/literary artists disappoint in person, but not Mira Nair. Seeing her fend off silly questions from audiences is as great as most of her work.
At the risk of sounding like an idiot...how, exactly is "Jhumpa" pronounced. Is it a soft "j" (as in "yumpa"), or it is more like je suis? I've heard it both ways, I just want to get it right.
Do other South Asians use these family nicknames or is it just Bengalis?
I'm a gujju jain, have a nickname for friends and family (Pinky) and Real name(Dharti) :)
I'm glad to see that Kalpen Modi will be getting (another) role where he can add dimention and emotion to the character rather than just a stereotype (Taj.) I also liked him as a supporting character in American Desi. Really looking forward to the movie though. Great review Cicatrix. Now I'm more interested in seeing it. Always a little wary of movies made after books - I get so attatched.
Hey SemiDesiMasala,
I've always heard it pronounced with a hard j like in jump. That's how it comes out when playing with a little kid, at least, and that's how pet names usually start, right? :) BTW, as for the book, was it as compelling as the short story she published in the New Yorker titled Gogol a few years ago, right before the book came out? I really liked that.
Kurma,
Those names are funny and kind of cute. I know an aunty called Lousy (I think it's supposed to be pronounced Lucy) and 3 Baby Auntys (who have grandbabies now too!)
After seeing the freeze publicity shot (above) of the family at the Taj Mahal, I rushed to my photo album to find an identical pic of my parents and sister standing in almost the same spot in the same pose sometime in 197..err something. It was too moving to see my mother standing so young in a sari with the same faraway look in her eyes that Tabu has. Can't wait to see the movie.
Just found an article that explains the pronunciation of her name as "Zoompa."
You can read it here: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040328/ai_n12752954
lahiri has stated in interviews that "jumpha" is her dak-nam, and other bengalis sometimes rebuke her for using it as her proper name. fwiw, "rajib" is my dak-nam (i had another one 'till i was three, "thoheen"). in k-5 my teacher turned it to "razib."
"British desi cinema is busted and has been for a long time."
Bastids! How dare you insult us Brits like that :(
BC, me too! I've seen it twice so far, but when the trailer came up at the cinema a few weeks back, i started getting a lump in my throat.
Once it's in wider release in NY, I'm taking my mother...
I saw Irfan Khan and Tabu at an event in NYC last night and had forgotten how tall she is, and didn't realize how tall he is too. Given the height of both of them together, they just look medium height on the film, but in person, wow, he really towers over you!
is anyone else off put by the portrayal of Moushumi in the trailer?
I had a hard time seeing the trailer soon after finishing the book last summer. Neither Kal Penn nor Zuleikha Robinson are what I imagined when I was reading the book -- but that is so often the case with literary adaptations, and I can probably get over it. It's just so hard sometimes when you have got your own idea in your head of what all these characters are like, and then see them realized on screen differently. When I see Robinson in the trailer, all I can think is "Paula Abdul" for some reason. Anyway, I'm still looking forward to the movie in a big way, and I'm glad most here seem to have really liked it.
Awwww, Tazzy girl, I wish I were in LA. In fact, I shoulda just gone to school at UCLA. How cool is it that UCLA can put on a screening of the film before it hit theatres and have 400 desi kids show up? I'm jealous. I'm not going to get it in Santa Barbara anytime soon :(
Hater on heteronormative
Refreshingly respectful comments below. A certain ten-dollar word gets the clowning it deserves. Makes you almost forgive the usual Gandhi typo.
Or not. Ghandi? Really? And they wonder why our kids do well at spelling bees.
Is it so unusual in Russia, Amardeep? Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev and Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich come immediately to mind--and that's without even having to trawl around for rare examples.
Wouldn't the frequency be about the same as that anywhere fathers name sons after themselves?
Shruti, it'll probably be up here in Santa Barbara in the next two weeks or so, is my guess.
In my husband's northie family, a bunch of people use their nicknames as adults, but most do not. Actually, it's pretty amusing at the occasional family wedding, where I'm sometimes meeting extended family for the first time. Inevitably, at least once or twice when I introduce myself to someone and they introduce themselves back. another family member pipes up, "Hey, I didn't know that was your REAL name!"
Well, if it was a Slavic language, maybe then the 'j' sound would go to a 'y', and in Spanish it would go to an 'h' and sound 'Hoompa'. But this is an interesting point. Different languages using the same script have different transliteration and phoneticizing conventions, and I've noticed that the 'h' preceded by a hard consonant always creates trouble for the Anglo-condioned 'Westerner'.
Complete threadjack - but SDM and SD - you're different people. Thought you were the same till just now. The odds of choosing such similar blog-handles! If it can be politely asked, what are your respective non-Desi parts?
cicatrix,
Excellently written review, perhaps the best I've read! I enjoyed it immensely, thank you. Please don't mind as I'm about to nitpick, it's a compulsion. You might want to look up the difference between fiancé and fiancée. Women don't have fiancées unless you're talking about Cheney's daughter - I've neither seen the movie nor read the book, so maybe you do mean it that way. Also, the review flowed really beautifully and consistently, until the last two paragraphs. I felt as if I was reading one of those assignments where two different people take turns writing paragraphs. Your writing was beautiful and then I got to your last two paragraphs. Perhaps you were tired, or perhaps you were trying to find a way to tie up loose ends. Overall, I still think you did a wonderful job.
Am I the only one who didn't think the book was all that? It didn't resonate with me at all, and I found it depressing.
I am really looking forward to seeing the movie though--sounds like it is beautifully shot and has some good acting, and I have a different (not worse, just different) yardstick by which I measure movies. And since I didn't like the book, I can't be disappointed!
What I find interesting about the 'Ghandi' typo is that usually 'h' doesn't follow letters like 'g', 'j', 'k' etc in Anglo proper names, and most people bounce on names like, say, 'Rekha', which rather routinely gets misspelt as 'Rehka'! So how people put the Gh together, I can't fathom. The other side of this is that some people with the name actually do spell it 'Ghandi', though it is rather uncommon, so it is not as if the misspellers pick up on the variant spelling!
Mr Kobayashi:
You've certainly saved me effort on that front! I bet you're right about the frequency being the same anywhere else.
An aside: If the namesake is about a protagonist who frets over his identity (name), they could not have cast anyone more appropriate than "Kal Penn".
Its interesting how Gujuratis are quick to become Naomi, Jessica or Ryan (all 100% desi relatives). Forestalling any "make-it-easy-for-hollywood" reasons, you have Leonardo di Caprio, who upon being asked by his talent agent to anglicize his name staunchly refused!
Both LAT and NYT liked it. Doesn't happen too often.
Did not like the book. But, the previews made me feel self conscious in a way i've never felt at the movies. As if the rest of the American audience around me was being being let in on to something private. Perhaps it is the fact that, for the most part, immigrant desis as a living breathing entity, have never been a major consideration in mainstream entertainment.
Whine - Have you noticed how JL's name is conviently missing from the posters. "Based on a best selling novel". Yes. But by whom? I can almsot see some Hollywood types finessing around this. Aaaargh.
Maybe I'll run into SMers at Santa Monica Laemmle.
Jhumpa Bush. No - that's not a typo. Jhumpa Bush.
Never mind all the talk about nicknames. Her full name is Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias. That in itself is puzzling, since her husband's name is Alberto Vourvoulias Bush. Why did she take on her husband's middle name as her last name? Most intriguing and highly unusual. Unless she did not want to be known as Jhumpa Bush! "Are you a relative of George Eye-Raq Bush?" "Ummm not really..."
M. Nam
Chachaji,
We are actually sisters. :) I started reading this blog about two years ago and when I decided to start commenting, I came up with the handle SemiDesiMasala. I introduced this blog to my sister recently and she chose the handle semidesi. We both ended up using the "semidesi" portion for the fairly obvious reason that it reflects our heritage. Our dad it a southy from andhra and our mom has a mixed european heritage (on her maternal side, the family is traced all the way back to the mayflower, on her paternal side, the heritage is mostly Slovak with a little hungarian).
To clear up any confusion...I always use my entire handle of SemiDesiMasala which can be shortenend to SDM and she always used semidesi. Cheers!
Sorry mate, I'm from England, and I hate the movies we make, or are made about us, in the UK these days. In the face of all that maybe America will produce some good and original and subtle stuff. Either way this looks good, doubt that a film like the Namesake would even get made here.
Wow! Thanks, SDM. BTW, I just visited both your blog and SD's - found them interesting and fun -will plan to spend some more time there when I can. Cheers!
Maybe the movie, to draw in bigger crowds, should have a prologue stressing the difference between Cincinatti Bengals and Bengal, the Indian state. Its a small thing we desis take for granted....but a lot
of people could be confused.
What do you say? Cincinatti Bengawls or West Bengulls? ;-)
Thanks chachaji :0)
semidesi's a wicked cool poet, glad you enjoyed it!
I saw this last night and was blown away. I recommend this film. I agree that Tabu and Irfan Khan did some great acting. Kal Pen is surpringly honest in his portrayal. There was one problem in the editing that most of you will probably catch; Ashima is seen putting on her sari but the shot is backwards; her pallu goes up her right side instead of her left. In the next shot it is on the left side. Cica, doesn't Gogol want to change his name after high school (one of his first signs of leaving the household)?
Ravi: In the novel, his name change definitely occurs while he's still in high school.
@36,
there is another angle to the name, though almost certainly wrong. jhampa is the name of a tala (beat), and given the penchant for raga based names (sahana, manjiri, kiranavali, etc.), it is vaguely possible this is the source.
Hey, thanks to everyone who liked the review! Watch out, all this adulation might make me post more often, and it's a quick fall to the gutter from there my friends. A frisky little tumble, I assure you.
risible, I think those groups especially might want to call their parents.
shlok, I scored a press pass, thanks to a certain SM Alumnus who couldn't use it ;)
mam, Moushumi seems quite real to me, actually. Know quite a few desi girls like her. She's the female version of Gogol in many ways, isn't she?
Many thanks to Amardeep for removing the typos I missed. Even though both of us, clearly, aren't as eagle eyed as sic semper tyrannis. My apologies for the gaffe re fiancé. I do know the difference, but apparently Microsoft Word doesn't. The last two paras suffered from an overuse of parenthetical statements and a mad dash to wrap up so I could get some sleep. But bonus points if you spot the egregious grammatical mistake here:
I wrote intentionally, but more due to laziness than poetic license.
I just mentioned the movie's release to a colleague of mine whose last name is Ganguli.
Here is a snippet of his email reply.
...........my cousin’s son was named after Gogol after they read this book
This, as in Namesake. :-)
For those asking, the namesake opens in DC next friday 3/16 at AMC Georgetown and Bethesda Row Cinema. And chicago also opens on 3/16 at Century Centre Cinema and Century Cine Arts Evanston. Santa Barbara opens on 3/23 at the Riviera theater.
"Whine - Have you noticed how JL's name is conviently missing from the posters. "Based on a best selling novel". Yes. But by whom? I can almsot see some Hollywood types finessing around this. Aaaargh."
well, i'll repeat my whine from yesterday :)
so this actress jacinda barrett was just on craig ferguson. they introduced her with a brief clip (where she goes to gogol's house) from the namesake and she came into the studio. after that, no mention whatsoever of the movie. the conversation was about her dogs basically. the host made no effort to ask her about the namesake and she made no effort to talk about it. so the question is: what was the point of this as a publicity exercise? i notice her name is being used as top billing alongside Kal Penn's on promo material (not sure how much time she has on screen), so shouldn't she have said something about the movie?
the way it was treated the audience was probably left thinking it was some nothing movie with some foreign-looking people not even worth talking about by one of its actors on a talk show or its host. i doubt if this was a more "mainstream" hollywood movie the interview would have neglected to mention it at all. i found it a bit disrespectful and dismissive, even if unitentional.
....and i am almost certain Night Shyamalan's name did not appear on any of the TV promos for Sixth Sense.
Yo, you live here?!
Thanks for the opening dates Gogol, but 3/23 is too long for me to wait. I'd have gone to home LA before that anyway. I'll just go to the Santa Monica Laemmle. If I have time I'll ask every desi guy I see there, "Yo, are you Neale? Are you Neale?" :)
I guess it will be some weeks before this movie hits flyover country... so I checked out another notable premiere.
I'm actually surprised there's not an outraged "300" thread in here yet. I'm not(for obvious reasons) part of "those people just want to keep us browns down" crowd... but that movie still gave me the serious creeps...
This is actually one of my pet peeves that has occured with other films. The first example that I can think of is "Bend it Like Beckham" where Parminder Nagra was the star and the main character and the movie revolved around her, but Kiera Knightly got all of the attention. Kiera's career took a stratospheric leap and Parminder got less attention and kudos. Personally, I thought Parminder's character was more interesting and she turned in a more charming performance, but Kiera ended up overshadowing her. I will be highly annoyed if The Namesake ends up garnering Jacinda Barrett more attention than the stars of the film. From reading the novel, I know that her character must be a supporting character. Well, that's my two cents.
...or the film version of "The English Patient" which reduces kip's and hana's relationship to the background, which dominates more of the book, and brings to the fore almasy's more peripheral romance. kip's story was pushed to the periphery of the movie and more central to the novel. i guess back then, and probably even now, a film centering on a romance between ralph fiennes and kristin scott-thomas would sell better than a film centering on a romance between naveen andrews and juliette binoche.
I forgot to add,its really a very good review.( i have read other reviwes who said this movie is great..but still).
Cicatrix, excellent review. I have only read the book, and i recall this particular sentence - when after Ashok's death, Gogol remembers his father's words... 'remember that you and I made this journey and we went together to a place where there was nowhere else to go.'
Btw, Gogol is not an uncommon name among bengalis. Here is a short story from Samaresh Basu's Gogol series.
Now because in the other thread we have heard of asylum-seekers, and Gogol had a fling with Maxine, and Ennis wrote about smells, I thought it will not be completely out of place to cut and paste this excerpt from Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, saved many moons ago in my hard disc. Dr. Juvenal Urbino returns to his home in the Carribean:
No way. If anyone is overshadowing, it's Tabu's spectacular performance. She had me crying within the first 10 minutes of the movie. (it usually takes me getting stuck in the story for at least 45 minutes before I start being emotionally invested). I am actually surprised that the rest of the cast is not making the publicity rounds and Jacinda is. Or maybe I've just missed them.
desishiksa (#56) no you are not the only one. I despised the book. Horribly boring, long and contrived.
I was most totally engaged when Irrfan Khan was on the screen. I won't be surprised if he and Tabu turn up in American film or TV roles - if they want to - in the next year or two, they are so powerful and impressive here. Tip: only see this with your parents if you are at ease watching relatively frank sex scenes with them - more nudity and "activity" than I have ever seen in a Hindi movie. Or such was the case at the film festival preview I saw in NY in the fall.
Finally, dear Tabu(ssam) gets the praise. Go Andhra ammai, go Hyderabadi :))
Even when she acted in those silly (and not so silly) telugu movies, she rocked. I wonder whats with these actresses blooming late(r) in their career. Shobana is also showing so much promise.
On a Tabu tangent, Here is one of her beautiful songs. Enjoy this!!
Kannulo nee rupame
Irfan and Tabu worked together for Maqbool, Vishal Bharadwaj's adaptation of Macbeth. An underrated but terrific movie. [youtube link]
I enjoyed the book so very much. The one thing that bugged me in the film was Tabu's inconsistent accent. She obv couldnt do Bangla all the way and often slipped into what was closer to Apu from The Simpsons. Irfan Khan's awesome. I helped w his interviews at the Dubai Intl. Film Fest in Dec, he showed up for press conferences in purple pants and a silky shirt. stud.
I cannot wait to see the movie but will likely have to wait since I live in Dallas and even the artsy fartsy Angelika and Magnolia theaters are not showing it yet. They still have to roll out the post Oscar films Lives of Others and Pan's Labyrinth.
The book was very helpful to me when my wife and I were dating. It gave me a little insight into the American-born Desi perspective. It also helped solidify our relationship.
Thanks cicatrix, just such a lovely review. I got myself a ticket to hear Jhumpa and Mira Nair talk about it at the NY Public Library tomorrow, so will try to see the movie forst.
SemiDesiMasala, it's a hard J, the aspirate comes after, and then a long oo, and Lahiri is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable. My younger daughter, who is stuck with her dak nam, Bear (but I don't think there's any embarrassment in it for her) reports trhat her friends cheerfully and knowledgeably say Jump-ah Le Hiri. You could say her pen name is her new dak nam. Bush would certainly sound disappointing.
Great review! I can't wait to see this movie with my parents next weekend when I'm in Chicago. The book didn't appeal to me especially in light of the phenomenal Interpreter of Maladies but then again I'm a plot-driven reader. Yet, my father and I have been excited to see this movie since we first heard about it. On the whole house names thing, I've heard rumor of my father's side having them. To my knowledge my mother's family does not keep a house name. My parents are both Gujarati and acording to my family's customs, the paternal aunt (the bua) names the first born. After that, it's up to the parents. Any other desis heard of a similar custom?
On the question of good-names and pet-names, see "G" in the "Bengali ABC" joke I received on email recently. Those who have lived in Calcutta and/or understand some Bengali may be amused. I guess the "Chappell" bit is now out of date now that he and Shourav have made nice. I vote for replacing it with "Cholbe na!"
THE ABCs of BENGALIS
*A is for Awpheesh (as in Office).* This is where the average Kolkakattan goes and spends a day hard(ly) at work. And if he works for the West Bengal Gawrment, he will arrive at 10, wipe his forehead till 11, have a tea break at 12, throw around a few files at 12.30, break for lunch at 1, smoke an unfiltered cigarette at 2, break for tea at 3, sleep sitting down at 4 and go home at 4:30. It's a hard life!
*B is for Bhision.* For some reason many Bengalis don't have good bhision. In fact in Kolkata most people are wearing spectacles all the time.
*C is for Chappell.* Currently, this is the Bengali word for the Devil, for
the worst form of evil. In the night mothers put their kids to sleep saying,
"Na ghumaley Chappell eshey dhorey niye jabe".
*D is for Debashish or any other name starting with Deb-.* By an ancient law
every fourth Bengali Child has to be named Debashish. So you have a
Debashish everywhere and trying to get creative they are also called Deb,
Debu, Deba with variations like Debanik, Deboprotim, Debojyoti, etc. thrown
in at times.
*E is for Eeesh.* This is a very common Bengali exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali, especially Bengali women, use eeesh 10,089 times every year. "Ei Morechhey" is a close second to Eeesh.
*F is for Feeesh.* These are creatures that swim in rivers and seas and are a favourite food of the Bengalis. Despite the fact that a fish market has such strong smells, with one sniff a Bengali knows if a fish is all right.
If not he will say 'eeesh what feeesh is theesh!'
*G is for Good name.* Every Bengali boy will have a good name like Debashish
or Deboprotim and a pet name like Motka, Bhombol, Thobla, etc. While every
Bengali girls will have pet names like Tia, Tuktuki, Mishti, Khuku, etc.
*H is for Harmonium.* This the Bengali equivalent of a rock guitar. Take
four Bengalis and a Harmonium and you have the successors to The Bheatles!
*I is for lleesh.* This is a feeesh with 10,000 bones which would kill any
ordinary person, but which the Bengalis eat with releeesh!
*J is for Jhola.* No self respecting Bengali is complete without his Jhola.
It is a shapeless cloth bag where he keeps all his belongings and he fits an
amazing number of things in. Even as you read this there are 2 million
jholas bobbling around Kolkata- and they all look exactly the same! Note
that 'Jhol' as in Maachher Jhol is a close second
*K is for Kee Kaando !.* It used to be the favourite Bengali exclamation
till eeesh took over because of Aishwarya Rai (now Kee Kando's agent is
trying to hire Bipasha Basu).
*L is for Lungi - the dress for all occasions.* People in Kolkata manage to
play football and cricket wearing it not to mention the daily trip in the
morning to the local bajaar. Now there is talk of a lungi expedition to Mt.
Everest.
*M is for Minibus.* These are dangerous half buses whose antics would
effortlessly frighten the living daylights out of all James Bond stuntmen as
well as Formula 1 race car drivers.
*N is for Nangto.* This is the Bengali word for Naked. It is the most
interesting naked word in any language!
*O is for Oil.* The Bengalis believe that a touch of mustard oil will cure
anything from cold (oil in the nose), to earache (oil in the ear), to cough
(oil on the throat) to piles (oil you know where!)
*P is for Phootball.* This is always a phavourite phassion of the Kolkattan.
Every Bengali is born an expert in this game. The two biggest clubs there
are Mohunbagan and East Bengal and when they play the city comes to a stop.
*Q is for Queen.* This really has nothing to do with the Bengalis or
Kolkata, but it's the only Q word I could think of at this moment. There's
also Quilt but they never use them in Kolkata.
*R is for Robi Thakur.* Many many years ago Rabindranath got the Nobel
Prize. This has given the right to all Bengalis no matter where they are to
frame their acceptance speeches as if they were directly related to the
great poet and walk with their head held high. This also gives Bengalis the
birthright to look down at Delhi and Mumbai and of course 'all
non-Bengawlees'! Note that 'Rawshogolla' comes a close second !
*S is for Shourav.* Now that they finally produced a genuine cricketer and a
captain, Bengalis think that he should be allowed to play until he is 70
years old. Of course they will see to it that he stays in good form by doing
a little bit of "joggo" and "maanot".
*T is for Trams.* Hundred years later there are still trams in Kolkata. Of
course if you are in a hurry it's faster to walk.
*U is for Aambrela.* When a Bengali baby is born it is handed one.
*V is for Bhaayolence.* Bengalis are the most non-violent violent people
around. When an accident happens they will fold up their sleeves, shout and
scream and curse and abuse, "Chherey De Bolchhi" but the last time someone
actually hit someone was in 1979.
*W is for Water.* For three months of the year the city is underwater and
every year for the last 200 years the authorities are taken by surprise by
this!
*X is for X'mas.* It's very big in Kolkata, with Park Street fully lit up
and all Bengalis agreeing that they must eat cake that day.
*Y is for Yesshtaarday.* Which is always better than today for a Bengali
(see R for Robi Thakur).
*Z is for Jebra, Joo, Jipper and Jylophone.*
Regarding Jhumpa's name: Just as Gogol Ganguli in kindergarten was supposed to be called Nikhil, so too was Jhumpa supposed to be called by her good name. However, her teacher decided to call her Jhumpa (unlike in the novel, where Gogol expresses a preference for that name), and it stuck ever after.
Now because in the other thread we have heard of asylum-seekers, and Gogol had a fling with Maxine, and Ennis wrote about smells,
Gogol was one of the most inasane great writers that ever lived. His best short story is "The Nose" where a man literally wakes up one day to discover that his nose has gone missing. He eventually finds it baked in a loaf of bread. His life, always on the edge of ruin,seems far removed from the staid Jhumpa (It may pronounce Oompa, as in the Oompa Loompas from "Willie Wonka and the Chocoalate Factory" ?) - a writer who signifies "petite-bourgeoise" and "model minority" to me, anyway.
The best literary tribute to Gogol comes from Thomas De Lampedusa, who wrote a lunatic short story called "Gogol's Wife," where he "discovers" that the great writer was actually married to a blow-up doll. The demise of the blow-up doll, at the hands of Gogol no less, is one of the most moving sequences in all literature.
Love the review. To add to the thread about music in the film, I was delighted that it featured a track from Susheela Raman's "That Same Song" (from her album Music for Crocodiles) which I cannot stop listening to. On another note, I had to write a teen-centered review for work yesterday -and after I was done, it got me thinking about how audiences of different ages will come away with something totally different from the film. That multifacetedness, I think, is part of what makes it so wonderful.
wth - is "namesake" transliterated into bengali in the poster? why??
Semidesimasala,
Regarding your Bend It comment, I really never realized that, but it's so true! I'm hoping Kalpen will get some more recognition because he's already done a few movies where he was a major character.
Chachaji, (This is kind of OT)
Just saw your comment about "us" (sorry was busy :P) and I thought you would find it amusing how this whole name came about : I hijacked my brother in law's DESI shirt he got from his sister in law because i felt like I needed a label, being so light, then I thought of what a more accurate t-shirt would say: SemiDesi. Then, well, lil' Masala told you the rest. Thanks for the kudos on the blogs too!
Literary Safari,
I agree with you (well, as much as i can not having seen it yet :P.) I like movies/books that can be so different for different people, and open up discussions, etc.
I just watched the movie last night in SF and the movie left me feeling incomplete. While I LOVED the first half of the movie with Tabu and Irrfan Khan, the second half, beginning when Gogol meets Mousumi, is where the movie fell apart and was choppy. Kinda sad for me considering Mousumi was one of my favorite characters from the book. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact while the kids' identities weren't as developed as the parents. I guess I was hoping that the approach for the film would be more from the Gogol's POV.
Irfan Khan is in Michael Wintterbottom's A Mighty Heart, which is due out in the Fall. (He plays the Pakistani police captain involved in the search for Daniel Pearl.)
SemiDesi
And this is really OT...
Totally. Be original, way to go! Now, for example, if you weren't a poet but, say, someone who drove semis in the Desh, you could call yourself DesiSemi. But - since nobody makes real semis in India (yet, afaik), it would only be a SemiDesiSemi, especially if it was also made in a Desi-non-Desi company collaboration, like this. Or, if it was a SemiDesiSemi with a really Desi flavor, you could call it a DesiSemiDesiSemi :0)
Oh, lil' Masala, is she? I thought she was the older one who 'introduced' you to this blog!
Sure thing. Really liked your Methuselah invocation. My (desi) Dad made me read the GBS original as an eight-year old, and I've never been the same since. (This is for all the desi kids prepping for spelling bees who think they have it bad!)
The trailer was simply awesome. Last year Joe Morgenstern of WSJ had great things to say about it after the Telluride Film festival. That was the first review (only a para, actually) that I had read about it & confirmed my impression after the trailer. Also last year Jacinda Barrett, who plays Maxine, said in Entertainment Weekly that ''Everyone in the cast spoke Bengali. I felt like an outsider.'' EW had a good review also.
I went, watched, heard, listened, blogged. There were two nifty surprises yesterday. Cicatrix, you're the best!
Chachaji,
(I guess this is a total hijack!)
HA! That would be the funniest thing to see a semi hurtling down the street in India. I think the closest thing to those was the darn TATA buses roaring down narrow mountain roads as we drove up to Munnar. SCARY I tell ya.
And, yes, I'm older than SD Masala. And shorter. She introduced me to this blog thru her blog. Actually, 4 years ago I didn't even know what a blog was (I thought it was some kind of booger j/k) but she got me up to speed.
Chachaji, that photo of the VERY decorated truck you linked to, is a Pakistani thing, right? I've never seen such decorated trucks in India but I've heard that's very common in Pakistan. Beautiful, in any case.
Amitabh, yes, this one appears Pakistani, though similar (if less extravagantly ornate) trucks probably do exist in India too (I would think). Of course, it's still Desi, right!
I think susheela raman's awsome on that track from her album crocodile tears.
Brownsugar,
I completely agree...I watched in last night in NYC, every show was sold out but as we were leaving this girl offered her tickets cuz her date didnt show up (bad for her but good for us), it would have been much better coming from Gogol's POV. I got the same feeling of incompletness while watching EARTH-1947 which was based on Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man. That movie could've been so much more...
Jhumpa Lahiri was interviewed on Fresh Air (NPR) and said about her "good name" that in fact Jhumpa was her pet name but it stuck when she went to school and her kindergarten teacher prefered the name, to her parents' distress she was registered that way. The teacher didn't like or couldn't pronounce her "good name"... You can search it at NPR.org
Those evil kindergarten teachers. Mine called me Tamale. Or maybe Attila. Anyway, I can't remember now. On a random Kal Penn note, my favorite of his movies thus far is Malibu's Most Wanted -- a wonderful satire of race and class in America.
I heard the interview just now - it's from back in 2003. Her 'good names' seem to be Neelanjana Sudeshna. I wondered how nobody thought to register her as 'Neela' or even 'Neila' - the first being a valid 'Indian' name by itself and the second a valid 'Western' name. I know so many (maybe too many) 2nd gen Indian-Americans males named Neil, so this would have been a relative no-brainer!
Her story reminded me of Santha Rama Rau, whose own given name, Vasanthi, is largely lost to history! Even more interestingly, Santha Rama Rau has an essay By Any Other Name.
Excerpt:
The incident is in India, circa 1930.
It seems Namesake is going to make it big!!
Indian Stunner,' the headline in the New York Post reads, followed by a glowing review for Mira Nair's adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's bestseller The Namesake. Giving the film three and half stars out of four, reviewer Lou Lumenick ends the piece: You don't have to be Indian to love The Namesake.
http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/mar/12name.htm
As for Jhumpa's husband's name, Alberto Vourvoulias Bush...his "middle name" is actually part of his surname. It is very common in the Latin-American community to keep more than one last name much like the hyphenated names in America. Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvolais-Bush can be understood as Jhumpa Lahiri "of the" Vourvolais-Bush family. Here's what I've read on hispaniconline.com (April 2006 issue)in response to a question about his roots,
"Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush: My father was American, but of Greek origin. He actually grew up in Colombia. And my grandparents from his family lived in Mexico for a long time as well. My mother’s family is Guatemalan, but her family also lived in Mexico for a time and that was where my parents met."