January 02, 2008
The Art Behind 'The Namesake'Film
I’ve been watching Mira Nair’s Director’s Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it’s been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists’ work. This was a film I liked quite a bit when I first saw it, and it had the unusual distinction of being a film my parents also liked. (I also liked the book, though I know from earlier discussions that a fair number of readers did not.) Watching the Director’s Commentary I realize there was a great deal in Nair’s film I had missed earlier.
Despite the immense amount of craft that went into the making of the film and the strong performances by Irfan Khan and Tabu, I doubt that The Namesake will get much attention come Oscar time. Why not is an endless question; one might point out that the Oscars don’t really award the year’s “best” films so much as the films the major studios feel are at once somewhat “serious” and “commercially viable.”
Still, the nice thing about writing for a blog is, you can pay tribute to the films that caught your attention from a given year, even if no one else agrees with you. (Readers, what desi-related films — produced in India or elsewhere — stood out to you from 2007?)
In the post below, I explore some names from among the large array of people who inspired Nair and collaborated with her as she put together the visual and aural elements of the film. The artists are both Desi (mostly Bengali) and American, though it’s really the former group that leaves the biggest impact on the film.
I hope you enjoy the links below as much as I did assembling them; they make for quite an art history lesson!
Milieu
Like Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake is in a sense a “milieu” film. In the first film, Nair used many members of her own family in the smaller roles; in her adaptation of Lahiri’s novel, it’s Jhumpa Lahiri’s family, for the most part, that gets the bit parts — Jhumpa herself shows up, at one point. Nair does use her niece, who was raised in the U.S., to play Gogol’s sister.
Nair also uses an Indian film critic named Jaganath Guha in one bit part, and the famous historian Partha Chatterjee, in another.
One surprise: I didn’t know that Irfan Khan (who plays Gogol’s father, Ashoke) had actually had a small role in Mira Nair’s earlier film, Salaam, Bombay, when he was just eighteen years old, and a student at the National School of Drama.
Bengali Artists and Filmmakers
At one point Ashima’s father is seen painting while sitting back, with his knees up. This apparently is an homage to Satyajit Ray, who painted in a similar posture. Nair also mentions that the sequence where the relationship between Ashoke and Ashima starts to develop (i.e., after they get married and move to the U.S.) is inspired by Ray’s Apur Sansar (“The World of Apu”).
Nair also uses Bengali actress Supriya Devi in a bit part, as another homage to Bengali art cinema (Supriya Devi acted in a number of Ritwik Ghatak films, including Meghe Dhaka Tara).
Asian Underground Musicians
The film’s music is done by Nitin Sawhney. It’s really pretty, understated music that has some powerful moments. Nair also uses State of Bengal’s “Flight IC 408” at one point as the Ganguli family is en route to India.
Baul Singers
In addition to cutting edge Brit-Asian musicians, Nair brings in traditional Baul singers, Lakhan Das and Bhava Pagla.
Indian photographers and Design Artists
The idea for the changing fonts (where the lettering goes from Bengali calligraphy to Roman) in the opening credits comes from Mumbai-based design-artist, Divya Thakur. In her commentary, Nair calls the idea “brilliant,” and I tend to agree (it produces an interesting visual effect, and the symbolism of a transition from one font to the other parallels the idea of cultural transformation that is at the core of both the novel and Nair’s film).
The photographs of the famous Indian photographers Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh inspired a number of the Calcutta shots, including the image, early in the film, of Durga being carried on a wagon on the street in the early morning.
The Taj Mahal
The greatest work of art used in Nair’s film is, of course, the Taj Mahal, and Nair films it from some unusual angles. The most interesting might be her use of the interplay of arches and domes (as in, the view of the splendid domes of the Taj through the arches of an auxiliary building).
Western Artists
The look of the paintings used in the opening credits are to some extent inspired by Mark Rothko. Nair says she wanted a “handmade” look, and the paintings do work that way — the texture of the canvas is visible, as are the brush strokes of the paint within the big swaths of color filling up the screen.
Nair used an installation by Diller and Scofidio at JFK (“Travelogues”), which features images relating to travel using a neat optical effect (produced by “lenticulars”).
The visual style of the whole sequence where the Ganguli family is at the beach in winter is inspired by Chris Marker’s art-house classic, La Jetee.
Quite a number of Nair’s shots at the airport were inspired by photographs by Garry Winogrand.
amardeep on January 2, 2008 09:49 AM in Film · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
How interesting! Thanks for sharing those fascinating nuggets of info.
Anyone know when this was?Shalu, Jhumpa shows up in the "baby-naming" scene about 29 minutes in. Nair also used Jhumpa's own baby daughter, Noor, as the baby in the scene. (The parents are also Jhumpa's parents... that's a lot of family!)
Another speculation/controversy that I came across recently ( probably already dicussed on the blogosphere) is that a person in Jhumpa's real life called Chakrabarti was probably the basis of Kal Penn's character in the film.
Bridget Jones,
Already discussed here at SM....
Amardeep,
I love the links and reading this post made me really excited to run out and get the DVD to watch the director's cut of Namesake. Too bad the folks just rented the Indian Grocery version of the Namesake DVD which means no DVD extras...!
>>Nair also used Jhumpa's own baby daughter...in the "baby-naming" scene about 29 minutes in.
This was a silly mistake, considering the painstaking attention to detail in various other shots. When the camera is zoomed back, it shows a cradle with a just born baby, and when it zooms in, it shows a ~six-month old that's crooning! I rolled my eyes. Oscar reviewers will walk out.
Maybe NRIs who came in the 60's and 70's and their children can relate to the characters. But for those of us who came in later, the movie is barely time-pass. Women who come from India nowadays don't mix pepper with cereal, drive horribly or work in the library in sarees. They are go-getters who work as equals in the work place, drive confidently, dress western but yet don't surrender their desi ways (religion/food etc).
M. Nam
5 · MoorNam said
And they don't have to sing songs during the arranged marriage meetups. Though I have heard it was common long-time back in south indian marriages. M.Nam here is how modern arranged marriages take place.
Amardeep,
Interesting review. I've been thinking about investing in the DVD myself. Perhaps I should've put in on my xmas list.
5 · MoorNam said
Correct me if I'm wrong but the movie is about immigrants who came here in the 70s and 80s. Maybe 20 years from now they'll make a movie on the more "assimilated" immigrants of the 90s and 00s.
2 · Amardeep said
Oh how interesting Now I'll have to see it again.. for the third time. =)
MoorNam @5
You wrote:
Sorry, M. Nam, you need to get out more. I can introduce you to women who immigrated in the 60's or 70's who are go-getters and equals in the work place, and drove confidently. Actually they *assimilated* into the American mainstream much more so than recent immigrants, because they had no other choice. I will never forget the quote of one such aunty I know: "We wore sarees and did *everything*". Better yet, she said it with a devilish glint in her eye.
Also if you think that immigrants today do not put pepper on thier cereal, check out numerous Indian american food blogs. Here is one example:
http://masalamagic.blogspot.com/2007/08/healthy-chivda.html.
5 · MoorNam said
This was *definitely* something my parents (who came in the 1960s/70s) could relate to...they used whatever they could at the time to make life as close to India as possible with limited resources.
I do however take offense at your insinuating that they weren't 'go-getters who worked as equals in the work place", didn't drive confidently, or dress western but didn't surrender their desi ways.
My mother did all that and more.
9 · lifelong said
Heck yeah! My favorite snack is a "cereal chevdo" my mom makes. =) It's something she started making the first week she arrived in the states in 1971.
Thanks so much for this, Amardeep! I always appreciate Mira Nair's thoughtfulness in how she crafts her films, and each time I watch I feel like I'm learning something new about an old friend. The director's commentary sounds really worth the investment.
Amusingly enough, the Namesake (we like to pronounce it "Na-may-sa-kay," as provided in the SM linked video) was a central feature of several kitchen table debates for my fam this holiday season. I think our consensus was that we all appreciate the story of Ashoke and Ashima, but we were starkly divided on representations of Gogol, Moushumi and their respective "identity crises."
Completely ignoring your comment on female NRIs of the 60s being non-go-getters who can't drive, I've found that this is not the case for 80s NRIs nor for ABD kids of 60s/70s NRIs. Maybe your statement (that it is not something more recent immigrants relate to) holds for even younger generations of immigrants (90s, 00s). As for pepper in your cereal, that is a bald-faced lie, sir :) Not only are there NRI desi women who paprika or cayenne their Kix, I know quite a few 2nd/3rd gen ABDs who spice their cereal as well. Heck, I still cumin my scrambled eggs. I think this varies by person, region, etc., not by immigration status/time :)Another reason it won't get much attention come Oscar time is that it just wasn't that good of a movie.
>> do however take offense at your insinuating..
>> Completely ignoring your comment on..
>> I can introduce you to ...
Like good desis, you all love your mothers a lot!
We are talking about a movie that's full of stereotypes of desis who came to the US in the 70's - and I don't get a little leeway in doing a bit of stereotyping myself while critiquing it?! *Sigh* the intolerance is striking.
Exceptions exist. I am sure there were a few women who came in the 60s who were go-getters in the workplace and made waves. Just like there are a few women who came in the 90s and completely lean forward and peer over the steering wheel while driving a car at 35mph in a 50mph zone.
But I am talking about the norm, not the exception.
M. Nam
I knew an ABD in college who did that. ;) Terror over driving knows no gen.
Slightly off-topic, but the New Yorker recently featured Jhumpa Lahiri in a podcast, reading and discussing William Trevor's short story "A Day." Quite interesting.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/12/17/071217on_audio_lahiri
I think my hesitation is over whether it was really the norm or whether we just know less about it. I think some of us have assumptions about the 60s/70s generation of women that aren't always true, poor driving and domesticity included in that :)
Maybe OT? Yannyways, for those of you who are following the NYT artickle about Japan looking towards Indian edu system, there are some nice comments from Indians who immigrated here in the 60s , 70s, etc.
14 · MoorNam said
The problem I had with your post was that you took the actions of Ashima in the movie and extrapolated them to mean that her character wasn't a go-getter in the workplace or that there was something wrong with putting chili powder on one's cereal.Taz,
If your in NYC, it's on On-Demand. Time Warner or Cablevision should carry it. Saw it for the first time yesterday and I had never read the book. I didn't think I would like it, worrying about how desis would be depicted, but I thought it was well done. It made me go out and buy the book to see how well it translated to the big-screen.
>>that there was something wrong with putting chili powder on one's cereal.
No no no - there's nothing wrong with that. You could dip fries into your coke and then eat it. Or put ice-cream on your burger. Or eat dosas wrapped around idlis.
It's a free country. Yes. That's what Mira Nair was trying to show in that scene.
M. nam
This was a silly mistake, considering the painstaking attention to detail in various other shots. When the camera is zoomed back, it shows a cradle with a just born baby, and when it zooms in, it shows a ~six-month old that's crooning! I rolled my eyes. Oscar reviewers will walk out.
MoorNam (#5), actually the baby that is "played" by Jhumpa's baby is in a different scene -- I think it's Gogol's *sister's* naming ceremony. The baby is being held by Partha Chatterjee.
I agree that the baby in the scene you're describing (Gogol's birth) was obviously not a newborn.
Isn't that common practice for Hollywood? Older infants playing newborns? Kinda like Andrea on 90210 but nowhere near as creepy (age-wise) or annoying (character-wise)?
i saw the movie on a flight - dozed off in the middle :-) - but just loved what i (think i) remember - the brushstrokes during the title and the gorgeous tabu playing (holding?) the veena at the end. anyone (Amardeep?) know who did the brushstrokes during the title scene. i love watercolors - just love the sound of a wet brush doing a masculine scrape across the sindoori background leaving a colored wake... loved it loved it. i'd be interested in knowing the style and the practitioners of this type of art - is it particular to East India (Bengal, Orissa)?*
*I do hope I didnt dream all this up. the mind has a way of going after a certain age.
i am a doddering idiot. pls excuse.
Thanks~! But I've seen the movie already. What I want is all the DVD extras such as Mira Nair talking over the movie talking about all the details Amardeep was talking baout! Or deleted scenes or outtakes. And sadly, bootleg dvds don't carry it on their copy...!
Irfan Khan deserves an Oscar. It's too bad he is not British. The Oscar voters orgasm over any cutesy tripe the British put out(Keira Knightley????). Hell, Judi Dench could spend a whole movie looking constipated and they will give her an Oscar.
I thought the movie overall was above average. I will however defend it on the realism angle. It wasn't just the 70s. Even in the 80s, I would notice male graduate students and their wives whose lives weren't that different the first few months they set foot over here. They got the clothing right on Irfan Khan. By the way, I never knew Tabu acted in Telugu movies. Do a search on YouTube. Funny to see her in some dance sequences.
Camille @ 17, you hit it when you said:
Those 60's and 70's women immigrants were not navel-gazing through their blogs. :-) Heck, many of them had little time to scribble notes on Blue aerograms. Usually, they only used the "back third".
The direction of the comment stream here along with Abhi's posts from his parents basement makes we want to go give all of the aunties of my childhood one big hug. Ashima included.
They are go-getters who work as equals in the work place, drive confidently, dress western but yet don't surrender their desi ways (religion/food etc).
Good thing you dont like to generalize :)
M.Nam @ 14,
17 · Camille said
See how nice it will if social sciences/analysis can get more quantitative like how it is happening with economics these days..
SM Intern: How to use the "Quote" functionality to quote more than one person ?
I finally saw it over the holidays with my parents (who came here in the early seventies). I was struck by how idealized the characters of Ashok and Ashima were in the film -- pure, holy, romantic, and peaceful "old world" Indians, the kind of immigrants that well-meaning folk like us to be. Can't remember if they were that perfect in the novel, but the "noble savage" has long been a beloved character in western literature.
Note to self: know about nude scenes beforehand in any flicks watched with 80-year-old father so you can fast-forward appropriately.
The Namesake's representation of American women was quite
stereotypical.
- It was a cheapshot to dress Gogol's girlfriend in a sleeveless black shirt at the funeral. Anyone
would have more decorum -- unfair to pin that on _the white girlfriend_.
- Another cheapshot was the interaction on Gogol's bed after the funeral. His white girlfriend
tries to persuade Gogol to still go with the New Year's plans.
- The touchy/feely call-parents-by-first-name was also unfair... the portrayal of the white girlfriend
reminded me of The Reluctant Fundamentalist -- quite hackneyed.
- If I remember correctly, Mira Nair's husband is an engineer. She favors making the male protagonist
a non-medical person (usually an engineer).... Am I wrong?
Irfan Khan was incredible. He slimness, body movement, laconic nature and demeanor was representative
of many men of that generation that I intereacted with over the years... I didn't recognize him
from The Warrior which I highly recommend.
-
Namesake is good a documentary not as a movie. Even as a documentary it had many shortcoming..I also felt showing a 6 month old baby as a new born was unprofessional to come from Miranair.
It doesn't have any qualities to be even nominated for oscar. This movie doesn't have any universal appeal.
This is becoming ridiculous. If you want to fault Mira Nair, fault her for something else OR fault EVERYONE else who does the exact same thing in movies/on TV. It's common practice to NOT use new borns.
35 · A N N A said
This is becoming ridiculous. If you want to fault Mira Nair, fault her for something else OR fault EVERYONE else who does the exact same thing in movies/on TV. It's common practice to NOT use new borns.
It's the recent parent faction... they have to point out their expertise. No need to ban them, let them bask
in their parental wisdom. This site bans people too quickly.
The Namesake shouldn't win an Oscar... as Saj pointed it's a mediocre documentary.
Actually, we don't. But tell us more of your experiences running a similar group blog, since you speak so confidently about how one should.
There was no mention of banning until you brought it up. It's unfair and inaccurate to insinuate that the bloggers ban people willy-nilly. Most are ex-debate geeks. They love arguing, so why would they get rid of opportunities to do that? We ban for violations of our commenting policy, not misapprehensions.
I'm pretty sure her husband is Mahmood Mamdani, of Area Studies/PoliSci Fame, see: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim and Citizen and Subject [his speciality is African history and politics and he is/was also at Columbia, where Nair teaches film. He's a third-gen Ugandan desi, if I remember correctly].35 · A N N A said
I watched the low budget comdey movie "waitress" the day after I watched namesake. Even in that silly movie they show the newborn and show jenna in a realistic way right after delivery of her baby.
So I was thinking how can miranair ignore such stuffs in her movies..may be she is so bollywood inclined!
Amardeep, A HUGE thank you for sharing this...I liked going through all this even more than I liked watching the movie in the first place. One of the few movie-books where I liked both, albeit for different reasons: the book was full of the internal dialogue, thoughts, observations and motivations, (has anyone read Jhumpa Lahiri's short story in the latest New Yorker? It's the same style, only ten times better). The movie is all Mira Nair, and one of her best - acted in so well, visually so beautiful yet accurate, and told the story so crisply. Now I know it's also full of Easter eggs...
Again, thank you for posting this, esp on such a bleak news day!
Please, Uncle MoorNam. My mother saw the movie with a bunch of her friends (it was their 'girls' night out' *cringe*), and they all came here in the late 80s or 90s, and they still related to it. Newer immigrants may feel less isolated than their predecessors for various reasons, but it's still a big move. Sure, all the details may have not been the same, but the same feeling of loss and isolation is still present. (This is why The Namesake depresses me, by the way, and so while I appreciate Mira Nair's style and it's interesting to find out little nuggets like this, I doubt I'll want to watch the movie again. I agree though, Irfan Khan was impressive, and Ashima and Ashoke in general struck a note in a way that Gogol and Moushumi didn't).
I'm willing to consider the possibility that more women now work outside the home than in the past though, if only because more middle class American women work outside the home now than in the 60s/70s. Though I honestly have never heard of this sprinkling pepper on the cereal thing.
42 · nala said
Chippendales was closed?
Perhaps they should've asked you for directions and timings?
Chippendales was created by a Bengali man, no less. SM probably already blogged about that, no?
44 · nala said
they can ask me anything...as long as they tip
38 · Camille said
Camille,
If out of 10 only 1 are not the go-getter type then just because there is one example doesn't mean one can generalize. Now if there are 10 million and you cannot ask ask everybody then you will have to do some kind of statistical analysis. I understand that it may not be perfect but it is much better and less biased than generalizations based on some indivudal cases that we hear or read about. Once cannot make policies based on just definitions.
38 · Camille said
If one is going to make judgements and policies based on things that cannot be defined and quantified then there is every likelihood that it will be the realm of perception, values, bias and prejudice.
I agree with most of the points in Comment #32 regarding the characterization of the white chick. That has to do more with a cluelessness than whiteness, especially the clothing at the funeral. I thought the movie was a little heavy handed with it. Then again, I have seen some really pandering behavior by whites at all Indian functions way back in time. One white chick gave a speech at one of my cousin;s wedding and she was going on about how enriched she is by being exposed to Indian culture, what a beautiful set of people we are, blah blah blah. Whites are a lot more savvier now as they interact with Indians in college and the workplace a lot more in recent years.
Amardeep's post: “I’ve been watching Mira Nair’s Director’s Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it’s been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists’ work.�
But of course! Great art is a delicate balance of “Tradition and the Individual Talent.� (Rahul, where are you when I need you?)
In the same essay, T. S. Eliot further explores the many intangible and inexplicable sources of creativity that the authors themselves are normally not aware of and comes to the conclusion that, “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.� Eliot has just reduced the artist to nothing but a medium, a lightning rod for the past and present, processing the surrounding influences in his or her own mind to deliver a product that is so unique that people might say, “It breaks from tradition, nobody has done it before.�
Nair's individual talent in the movie, The Namesake, goes far beyond the milieu, Ray, the Baul Singers and other subtle influences, though they are certainly its most endearing and widely enjoyed quality. Amy Tan did it better and much earlier in “The Joy Luck Club,� (1989) and had a much broader impact on American society with the peccadilloes of a race far more familiar to mainstream Americans than Indians. Nair herself had already done Mississippi Masala in the early Nineties, with uncle-ji's freaking out over a black boyfriend, and Bend it Like Beckham, with a “nice� Indian girl forsaking a proper career for kicking soccer balls. My Big Fat Greek Wedding had already made its mark on America.
Hence there is far more tradition and little individual talent in the The Namesake if you are only looking at the milieu. Lahiri's, and Nair's, “individual talent� lies in soaring above the much overdone first-generation context and bringing home a universal human condition – the alienation and cultural confusion of displaced people in general. The Namesake, in my humble opinion, is about an increasingly global phenomenon, thanks to transcontinental mobility, called the diaspora. Therefore, it is just as applicable to the Bengalis in the US as to the Turks in Germany and to the Tibetans in Delhi or to the Cubans in Miami. It is about people grasping for cultural straws, and not being able to find them, reverting to familial cocooning that we humans naturally fall into in times of need. Ashoke keeps going back home every summer to family in Kolkata and in a brutal irony, dies in a rented apartment away from home, Gogol leaves his white girlfriend and comes home (to his parent's home) after losing his father, Ashima decides to go home, announcing her decision to spend most of her time in India now that her husband is dead. It is the unchanging story of people living in a foreign land, just trying to cope.
Amardeep, the literary critic, may attribute Nair's airport shots to Garry Winogrand's work and the beach scene to Chris Marker's art house classic. Nair may not have even heard of Winogrand or Marker. It is for critics to discern relationships and connections. But the types of work that Winogrand and Marker exemplify must have been sampled somewhere by a bright individual such as Nair, and they did surface unexpectedly in the making of The Namesake. The tradition did its job, and so did the individual.
I apologize for my rather lengthy comment, but you people should be thankful that you were spared my opinions in the early posts on The Namesake.
I don't mean to be rude, but do people here not know what documentaries are?
Floridian, your comments on "tradition" in The Namesake are intriguing, especially the slippage from "tradition" in Eliot's sense to "tradition" in the Desi parent's, "why don't you marry a nice Bengali girl" sense.
But a couple of corrections -- first, Mira Nair didn't do "Bend it like Beckham." That was Gurinder Chadha, whose track record as a filmmaker has been much spottier ("Bride and Prejudice") than Mira Nair's in my view. Mira Nair has also been much more interesting and edgy about her multiculturalism than someone like Amy Tan, whose work is full of exactly the kinds of cliches that Nair tries to avoid.
Secondly,
Amardeep, the literary critic, may attribute Nair's airport shots to Garry Winogrand's work and the beach scene to Chris Marker's art house classic. Nair may not have even heard of Winogrand or Marker. It is for critics to discern relationships and connections. But the types of work that Winogrand and Marker exemplify must have been sampled somewhere by a bright individual such as Nair, and they did surface unexpectedly in the making of The Namesake. The tradition did its job, and so did the individual.
Nair actually specifically names Winogrand and Marker in her commentary. There is even a "Special Feature" on the DVD where she juxtaposes the original photos by these photographers with her own shots in the film.
Is that what you tell all your
clientsinvestors?53 · nala said
right before i take their assets
I hope that everyone involved had liabilities checked first.
55 · nala said
too much due diligence puts closing the deal at risk
Did anyone here have problems with the faux-Bengali accents of Tabu & Irfan? I have never heard a Bengali speak like that. It distracted me so much I couldn't enjoy the movie. Being a Calcutta-born Bengali myself, this was a movie I desperately wanted to like ever since I read Joe Morgenstern's review in the WSJ after he saw it at the 2006 Telluride film festival, & later saw the trailer. That meandering script, sentences that take an eternity to complete & juxtaposing the Brooklyn Bridge (?) with Howrah Bridge every few minutes didn't help either.
But my American friends who have seen it loved it. Go figure. Maybe I was expecting too much after Monsoon Wedding.
Touche. :)
Yes.
Floridian, I wanted to chime in on the chicken-and-egg part of this discussion, and Amardeep's comments on the photographic influences that Mira Nair pointed to, when the film was released in NY last year, there was also an exhibition called Namesake/Inspiration at a gallery here.
I don't have the little guide from it handy right now, but I do recall some quote/s of MN there saying how these pictures had inspired her work on the film. (The above URL is a link to my account of the opening night, with Ms. Nair, Tabu, and Irrfan Khan all in attendance.)
Happy 2008, y'all.
Amardeep #52: "Floridian, your comments on "tradition" in The Namesake are intriguing, especially the slippage from "tradition" in Eliot's sense to "tradition" in the Desi parent's, "why don't you marry a nice Bengali girl" sense."
I thought I was being quite consistent with "tradition" in Eliot's sense. The literary tradition behind "The Namesake" is the genre of "transplanted culture" stories that Nair herself had done so brilliantly before, as did Amy Tan and Gurinder Chadha, who happens to be my favorite. I saw "Bhaji on the Beach" again recently, and it still felt edgy.
I apologize for attributing "Bend it Like Beckham" to Nair. I had a memory lapse.
Amy Tan does seem dated now but when she first appeared on the scene, her stuff was as fresh as Lahiri's. It goes to show that a genre alone does not guarantee an author a long shelf life. The work has to stand on its own legs.
Although parts of 'Namesake' were aesthetically pleasing, overall, I found the film to be inert and plodding. Nair's actors are up to the task and her production designer(s) definitely create the setting but she seems to treat the material with too much reverance, simply letting her actors sit there and act out the words on the page. There's none of the pacing, crispness or flair we've seen in her previous works.
Another quibble I had was with Sooni Taraporevala's script which I thought was lazy and uninspired, simply regurgitated Jhumpa Lahiri's novel in screenplay form. The novel is supposed to be source material, not a que for the screenwriter to cut and paste dialogue and scenes verbatim.
I like Mira Nair and will always watch anything she puts out but I'm still waiting for her to make a film that combines the scope and storytelling ability she showed in 'Salaam Bombay' with the visual sophistication and insight of her 'Hysterical Blindness'.
What did I miss about this movie? Was there some deep philosophical revelation hidden somewhere? Saw it last night and just barely kept awake.
Check out Ashima's sari when the family is visiting the Taj. It's like a deconstructed Indian flag.