Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on March 09, 2007 at 13:33:09

'Namesake' Is
A Richly Spiced
Immigrant Saga
An Endearing, Wry Tale
Of Indian Family in U.S.;

March 9, 2007

By Joe Morgenstern

Early in the course of "The Namesake," a young Indian woman, exquisite but disconsolate, stands alone in a spare American kitchen, pondering the riddle of breakfast. She has just come from tropical Calcutta to the ice and snow of New York City with a new husband she barely knows, an ambitious young man who has lived in New York and works in fiber optics. She knows nothing about anything in this city. Warily, she examines a box of Rice Krispies, pours a helping into a bowl, sprinkles it with curry powder and munches a first spoonful of the dry mixture without pleasure. This immensely pleasurable film is anything but dry. It's a saga of the immigrant experience that captures the snap, crackle and pop of American life, along with the pounding pulse, emotional reticence, volcanic colors and cherished rituals of Indian culture.

"The Namesake" was directed by Mira Nair from a screenplay that Sooni Taraporevala adapted from the debut novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri. In her previous film, "Monsoon Wedding," Ms. Nair evoked the drama of an extended family by bringing its far-flung members together for a ceremony in New Delhi. This time her story is centrifugal, at least at the start. After an arranged marriage, a pair of almost perfect strangers, Ashoke Ganguli and his bride Ashima, fly off to the United States, where they struggle to put down roots, succeed beyond their hopes and raise an almost thoroughly American son -- the namesake of the title -- with the singular moniker of Gogol Ganguli.