Forsake ‘The Namesake’
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He’s credited as both Kal and Kalpen in the schizophrenic Namesake |
I wanted to love the Namesake movie. I loved the trailer. It’s the first mainstream movie about the Indian-American experience. This could have been my story. It’s also a trip back to immigration nostalgia. I read Slashdot at Lodhi Gardens and see Pakistani protests on Flickr. Nets and jets leave little room for reminiscing.
But the ’70s and early ‘80 were different. I have faded pictures of my family from then. Bur-days with nuclear chutney on foam plates and samosas. Aunties in kitchens and psychedelic large-print saris. Uncles with aviator frames and Indo-fros. Kids in Garanimals and patches. Orange shag and avocado fridges. Me and Rahulio down by the schoolyard.
The movie finally opened in India, and it’s underwhelming. It’s not good. It’s the opposite of good. Where to begin?
This is a slow, inert flick written for the Western gaze, canted more to win awards than hearts. It bears the unmistakable imprint of its cool, controlled source text. Mira Nair’s amped up the highbrow quotient but regressed from Monsoon Wedding in terms of watchability and raw fun.
Pace. Few scenes have much energy. Tabu is languid, she can’t carry a movie. The dialogue delivery is slack, it doesn’t snap. The second half bored me. The sins: rewriting Bong culture as mopey rather than expressive. Excising all the fun and vibrance of Indian culture in favor of a mystical spirituality. Bongs are among the most passionate on the subcontinent. She desiccates them and turns them into mopey New Yorker clichés.
Fakeness. There’s so much arty, show-not-tell, imply-don’t-weep that it’s like getting only half a phone conversation. Like a skipping record needle, skip-skip-skipping over major plot points. Actors reacting inauthentically to major life events, like not bothering to clarify the circumstances of a loved one’s death. People speaking English when in real life they’d speak Bengali. People speaking English in bad Indian-American accents. An Indian calling it the Ganges rather than the Ganga.
Clunky dialogue. ‘It isn’t enough that we’re both Bengali’ and ‘I’m trying to be here for you but I just don’t know how’ and ‘How did you get so sexy?’ (thoughtful pause) ‘Paris.’ And the other man’s name is Pierre, really? Was Jean-Jacques taken? The affair section is clear French film homage and parody, but it’s so incongruous in this drama, and played so straight by the actors, that it comes off as ridiculous.
Cliché. Bringing in a gratuitous Taj Mahal — could there be any bigger India cliché? Scoring every India scene with Indian music or flute (except the homecoming to the fabulous, iconic track ‘IC408.’) Moving the parents’ story from Cambridge to New York City for marketability. Stacking the deck against America by introducing no real white characters (but then this is a movie about alienation).
Casting. Casting the first Indian-American male romantic lead as Kal Penn instead of someone better-looking like Sendhil Ramamurthy. Penn seems like a great guy, but we need a brown Jude Law here. He’s not very convincing as a teen, his voice is too deep and his rebellion way too stereotypical. Penn never seems to age convincingly.
Continuity. The lenticular HP ‘+’ ads and modern Tata ads in the Calcutta train station are anachronisms. Zuleikha Robinson lost baby Moushumi’s British accent and never picked up a French one, which is puzzling.
Focus. This claims to be a second gen film and puts Kal Penn front and center on the poster. But, like the novel, it’s really about the first gen. You get much deeper into the mind of Ashima than Gogol. The real namesake of this film isn’t Nikolai Gogol, it’s Ashoke Ganguli.
In a word, disappointing.
Here’s what I liked and commend: the tender, underplayed wooing scenes between Ashoke and Ashima (Irrfan Khan may be the most sensitive new husband ever); the strange but interesting interpretation of breaking the bad news, when Ashoke holds his wife down and tells her of her father’s death; the shift to blue filter when Ashima gets the late-night phone call; Gogol sobbing into his father’s bed; the alienating Christmas lights on the lawn; the family snapshot on Roosevelt Island; the date with Moushumi at a lounge which resembles Glass; Ashima reciting Wordsworth; shout-outs like ‘IC408′ and mocking India stereotyping and Joseph Campbell; fun French pop and Susheela Raman’s strangely-accented but lovely take on the Mukesh classic ‘Mere Deewanapan’ (even the Mississippi Masala soundtrack was candy); the Bengali calligraphy and English-Bengali morphs in the opening credits; Indian kids less annoyingly perky than Bollywood ones; time cues like the old Volvo and the roach clip made of a graduation tassle; Jacinda Barrett’s über-sweet Maxine; the Durga Puja statue and drummers; the Calcutta trams; turning Gogol into the common nickname Guglu; tracing feet and sending out for Batas; Gogol’s human rights lecture, and his mother singing to him playfully in response.
These are beautiful touches, but they don’t make me want to watch the movie again. Two vignettes of the old Nair: one, the Baul singer inserted artlessly while scattering the ashes. Nair wants to have it both ways, both the filmi Bollywood style and art film respectability. She cleaves the baby by having the singer just happen to drift by on the Hooghly. But this doesn’t work by half measures. With a singer this soulful, gesticulating this wildly, you either go for it or keep him on the score and cut the visual. The old Nair would’ve gone for it.
Two, this movie wrapped with sober, black and white end credits instead of the exuberant red and orange lines which closed Monsoon Wedding. Precisely.
Here’s a more positive review.
Much of the culture clash went over the heads of a lot of otherwise savvy pubs, so some sort of glossary in the press kit might have been useful:
… a character like Maxine would certainly know that you don’t wear a tank top, even a nice one, to a funeral, but Nair seems to have added this detail to enhance the distinction between Maxine’s world and Gogol’s, and the extra hammering isn’t necessary. [Salon]
The greater faux pas wasn’t the tank top, it was wearing black instead of white.
… [Ashima] is left alone to grapple with the mystery of the American breakfast. She fills a bowl with Rice Krispies–and then covers them with curry powder and peanuts. [Economist]
Ashima wasn’t messing up cereal, she was making an Indian snack.
Many reviews mention Maxine’s kissing Gogol’s parents on the cheek as an example of culture clash, but nobody seemed to catch that she called them by their first names.
For you Bollywood avoiders, here’s the kind of fare with which Tabu got her start:
The Bollywood movie Hattrick made the same Ganguli/gangrene joke as The Namesake. In the former, Nana Patekar’s cricket-blind doctor says, ‘I don’t know Ganguly, I only know gangrene.’ In the latter, neighborhood kids have knocked the last four letters off the Ganguli family’s mailbox and spraypainted ‘GRENE’ at the end. Did Hattrick name-check The Namesake?
on Monday, March 26th, 2007, 9:33 pm in Film, Kal Penn › 
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“For you Bollywood avoiders, here’s the kind of fare with which Tabu got her start”
For your viewing pleasure, her start.
I dont know if I want to agree with this review. I really really wanna watch Namesake.. or as they call it in the US of A - Nam-a-sak-e :)
Thank you Manish.
I meant her debut.
I liked it better than the book. (as you know, Manish, that’s not saying much)
I really couldn’t buy Kal Penn as a teenager, not when they forgot to color out some of his greys around the temple hairline. boo.
I was hoping for something visually as delicious as monsoon wedding, but was left hungry. Tabu was strong, though.
my faults aren’t with the acting, so much as the adaptation– certain critical points were omitted, and I feel the emotional investment the audience could make suffered as a result.
Tabu’s obesity issues overwhelm this masala ABCD flick more than one can imaging
THANKYOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I thought I was the only one who looked around incredulously after finishing that book, wanting to yell Bullshit at the top of my lungs.
I wasn’t sure of it before, but glad to know not all of us are crazy indophiles..(is that the right word?)
Dude - you’re so emo!
*heartbroken* I was so excited about watching it sometime this week, but am glad there’s someone who can tell it like it is. well, as long as it’s more bearable than the bsflick based on ‘Mistress of Spices’…
I loved the movie. The fact that Kal Penn can’t really act was laid bare and was what brought the whole movie down some.
However, some scenes in the movie just took me back to so many funny and bittersweet memories that it more than made up for his performance. The fact that I have never read the book also probably added to my fondness for the film
What really got to me however, were the scenes that took me forward to moments in my life that haven’t happened yet. Those were the images that stayed with me after the movie.
So is Jacinda Barrett in your past or your future?
Good review.
Disclaimers: 1) I have not read the book. 2) I was drunk and dead tired when I watched it on a Friday night at Embarcadero. I thought I would definitely watch it again, so I was not losing much. I have not felt like revisiting it since then.
Anachronisms: Early in the film depicting 70s Calcutta, there is an annoyingly long product placement of The Telegraph newspaper which was launched in 1982. I hope I am wrong about this.
Fakeness: Be grateful that you do not speak Bangla. Tabu’s accent is jarring and inconsistent. Irfan rarely speaks Bangla with her which is very unrealistic. Often he would respond to Tabu’s Bangla questions in complete English sentences and at other times, with a weird accent — and I am guessing, in a dubbed voice — he would speak perfect little bangla sentences without a single English word. Upper-middle class Bengalis with English-medium education — these two characters do not entirely fit that profile, however, and to me, seem to be in somewhat of a socio-cultural limbo — constantly mix Bengali and English words and sentence fragments when they speak. Good examples of how it’s done right are Ray’s Kanchanjangha, Seemabaddha and Kapurush scripts. Most of the conversations between Irfan and Tabu on the other hand were painful to my ears. It’s a pity because both of them are very capable actors and they have a few good moments together when they are silent.
Unemotional cheerless FOB parents - This probably has less to do with the film than the book and is more of a generic rant. The FOB parents in diasporic literature and films seem one-dimensional to me. The only exception that comes to mind is Om Puri in My son, the fanatic. I am a Bengali FOB of batch 97, but a couple of my uncles immigrated in 70s. During the last ten years in US, I have spent a lot of time with them and their friends who are a lively, diverse and passionate bunch with amazing stories to tell on how they raised a family in a pre-globalization US, overcame racial prejudices at work, created Bengali communities, nurtured Bengali culture and above all thoroughly enjoyed the journey and assimilation. I am yet to see their sense of adventure and accomplishment reflected in diasporic art. Why are the filmy parents always self-righteous, frigid and immersed in self-pity? Why do we only see them arranging marriages, imposing curfews, sacrificing for their children, and pining for a country that does not exist any more?
Less than halfway through the film, I realized I was not the target for the film and stopped caring about the characters. Overall it is not a bad film and the interactions between Gogol and Ashoke were powerful. But it is too scattered. And I had expected more of an insider’s view from a director who spent her summer school holidays in Calcutta for 12 years, references Apur Sansar by copying shots of Apu playfully tying one end of Aparna’s saree to his garment, and in her end credits acknowledges Ghatak and Ray — and that order is significant for her — as her gurus.
dipanjan, can’t agree with you on the bengali entirely. tabu was indeed atrocious with her bengali accent (and this is after acting in one other bengali film, “dekha” by goutam ghosh). but i thought irrfan khan was excellent. this is an english film so cannot be expected to have solid bangla chunks. that’s a liberty that i think nair should be allowed to take. we’ve barely reached that point where indian-english films have credibility, let alone a bilingual film. i’m not going to get into the comparison with ray for the simple reason that i don’t think nair or her work is comparable - either in language, scope, intent or market - with that of ray’s.
also, i suspect the whole point of irrfan khan’s character is being in a cultural limbo. it begins with gogol’s “the overcoat” and ends with him dying alone in a strange hospital in cleveland.
you Cow! -mock-anger or maybe not- Have you ever considered the sensitivities and sensibilities of those who may not have read the book or seen the movie? Argh! what’s left in the story. you’ve given away the Front and the End. The only thing to look forward to are the chiffon-sheathed rotundas in the movie!!!!! Aaeeee! Tarzan angry. Tarzan bugger chimp now.
oops. *offers tarzan a banana*
if it makes you feel any better, there’s the whole thing about gogol’s relationships that i haven’t got into. :-D
I was disappointed with The Namesake, but only because I had heard great reviews. I wasn’t a big fan of the book, it being a poor - and somewhat repititive - cousin to Jhumpa’s first one, which I loved.
But novels are also notoriously difficult to adapt into 2-hr films. Jhumpa had the luxury of dwelving into the background story of Ashoke and Ashima to lend to the conflict the main character of the book, Gogol, faces; a film-maker does not. I suspect Mira Nair got tempted to stretch the sketch on the parents after managing to find wonderful actors to play those parts. As a result, what ended up was best summed by a bored boyfriend sitting behind me at the movie hall, “Bahut kucch ho raha hai, aur kucch nahi ho raha hai.”
The acting was good, I was pleasantly surprised by Kal Penn, who was the only person I really felt for. But then again, his was the only character with an arc. Actually, Moushmi does have a minor one too - in the novel - but by the time she made her entry on screen, there was room for only another 25 minutes of footage, so she got caricatured into a flooze.
The only plus point of the experience is that I obtained the number of a guy who sells tickets in black at Suburbia, the only Bandra theatre where I didn’t have access to ‘tele-booking’. Relieved that such enterprise had hit Suburbia too, I bought two tickets and then asked “Yeh kab se chalu kiya yahaan pe?” The guy, thinking I was accusing him of corrupting the place, walked away, saying, “Pacchees saal se chal raha hai, aur pacchees saal aur chalega.”
I called out to him, “Aap ka koi number hai?” At which point, Sikander - as he told me later - raced back to give it to me. His colleague, meanwhile, fished out two tickets from his back pocket, and switched them with the ones I already had. “Yeh acche wale seat hai sir,” he said, breaking into a conspiratorial smile, “sirf aapke liye.”
Dont have much time to provide a slowwww, lyyyyricalllll annnnalyyyyysissssss but -
It crawled under my skin and gave me hives.
Tabu’s dialogue delivery seemed like a woman in constipation. Bengalis dont speak so slow. And 20 years of living there should have improved her accent somewhat. I’ve met lots of ladies of that genre who dont speak anything like that. Her accent slipped up every now and then, into the local Hyderabadi twist.
That gravel rubbed voice cant sing anything, let alone the wafting bengali notes.
The how did you get so sexy line is gauche, to say the least.
I have nothing against not-nice-looking people but it wouldve helped to get someone better looking than kalpen. His face is 30% face and 70% lips. Jolie gets away with it, he doesnt. It hangs from his face like the rotund balcony of an old colonial house.
I also dont know where it was going with the whole fishnet stocking closeups..s*& kitten look… leading to…NOTHIN.
Also, what was that strange mating-ritual-dance-sequence post the wedding. Clearly there are facets of the ABCD culture I’m not privy to.
And something one of the other reviews picked up - any sane person would know better than to wear a tank top to a funeral. In my opinion, that wasnt QUITE the way to highlight cultural differences. Using first names and kissing on the cheeks wasnt either - 20 years of living there wouldve got them used to it.
(But Bengalis of that generation DO call it the GANGES when speaking in English.)
Irfan was the only redeeming part though.
It was staccato without being organised. Haiku-ish which wasnt lyrical. A namesake, not the real mccoy.
Changing the setting from Boston to Manhattan doesn’t help much ;).
I grew up in the US during the 70’s in an Andhra family. While reading the book, I was amazed to see how similiar Bangali culture is to Andhra culture.
Manish, I agree that Kal Penn was a disappointing choice to play Gogol. However, Sendhil Ramamurthy doesn’t look like a particularly good actor. I’m basing this on what I’ve seen of him in “Heroes”.
I thought Sendhil was brilliant in Tom Stoppard’s play Indian Ink. Haven’t seen him on TV though.
Did you read the book? Nair didn’t have to reach very far to characterize her as a floozy. Total harlequin novel by the end.
I have nothing against quiet films. I do have something against films that try too hard to be art-house by being quiet and using lots of visual cues.
Great analysis…I found it to be a pandering, uninspiring and ultimately boring film. Kal Penn has a much better feel for comedy; I didn’t buy him as a teenager, and I certainly don’t get what those women saw in him.
I saw this as clearly a film meant to appeal to nostalgic immigrants and white people fascinated by India and expecting the same old exoticized mysticism. That being said, I thought Irfan Khan was extremely dignified and enjoyed his performance. Tabu was a pleasant surprise as well.
Moushumi just seems like a cliche to me; like an american girl’s teenage dream of what a sexy woman would be. Maxine is likewise a caricature. Even Gogol hardly seemed like an individual. This film is guilty of lazy storytelling, poor casting and the lack of a compelling plot. Overall I’d give it one star out of five.
Very interesting well written review Manish..
I didnot see the movie as yet..
To begin with I did not think Namesake would make a good movie..The story was slow paced, number of characters in the novel were few, characters are not spicy or interesting, its novel with more emotion than plot..Its a novel with an emotional psychological experience/journey/story and does not have dramatic scenes/drama to make it into a movie..Its just a first generation/ second generation indian experience with lot of emotion involved and does not have that much dialogue or plot to it to make it into a movie..
I thought Jhumpas novel “Namesake” was a lot better than “mistress of spices” interms of story with a movie potential..
Manish, Tabu is a fine actress , watch her movies ” astitva” and Chandibaar”and “maachis”. she won two national awards for her performance.. she is one of finest actresses in the present generation of acting talent in India.. Its not probably her acting in this movie, it is the character she had to portray..I didnot see the movie but I thought the female protagonist in the novel is just sober..not a lively Bengali woman..it is long since I read the novel..may be Iam not right..
Like the chitra divakarunis novel “mistress of spices”.. I dont know why good directors like Gurvindar chadda decided to make a movie on such a flat plotless novel like mistress of spices..u cannot make good movies or screenplays from such novels.
Agree with the review, I too was disappointed with the movie. The absolute highlight of the movie for me was Susheela Raman’s rendition of “yeh mera deewanapan hei”. Wow, what an amazing voice! And such a loving rendition - if anything, the accent made it even more charming. Old school jazzy-bluesy fusion of classic Hindi numbers : it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Great review, Manish. I had similar thoughts with regard to the choppy script and direction that led to a movie fraught with exoticism.
I only recently read Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, perhaps my first real foray into the South Asian diasporic literature in America. Having read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth recently (which I adored), I was underwhelmed by the execution. Lack of character development and dialogue, sweeping generalizations, a dour narrative voice, and a somewhat forced conclusion made me long for a wittier, warmer authority. I realize that the literature won’t live up to the complexity of my immigrant experience, but the stereotypes truly grated on my nerves.
(Spoilers in the rest of this response! Don’t read further if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie yet and intend to!)
Hearing positive reviews for the movie, I watched it with two Chinese-American friends. It was interesting to hear their comments afterwards, with one summing it up as a “Joy Luck Club” for Indians (and not in a positive way). Moushumi became a caricature of the awkward ugly duckling; her budding womanhood became a cliche, with that being the explanation for her affair. A possibly improvement would have been to parallel the difficulties Gogol has in his married life with the loneliness Ashima initially felt - a far better tie-in to the dilemmas faced by both first and second-generation immigrants. Maxine and Sonia became even more distant figures in Gogol’s life, even more hollower than in the novel. Overall, this was a glib tribute to the buoyant culture I knew as a Bengali growing up in American suburbia, an unsatisfying rendition. Even worse was juxtaposing poor Kumar of “Harold and Kumar” onto Kal Penn’s face whenever he would pout.
I did, however, appreciate the performance given by Tabu. There were definite mistakes made in the approach to her character (slowness of her Bangla-dialogue, lineless-makeup, too-low petticoat, passive behavior in the midst of her rebelling children), but then, these details weren’t necessarily apparent in the novel’s descriptions either. She and Irfan Khan give such a warm portrayal of the love, commitment, and sacrifice needed not only for immigrants, but for any married couple. I appreciated their silences, and wished viewers had a better insight into the lives of Gogol and Sonia.
Does it help or hurt to realize that Moushumi may have been based on the author?
It’s funny that you mention that detail, Ennis. Having been raised in the (Hindu) Bangla community on both the east coast and the Chicago area, I’ve intersected with other second-generation Bengalis, often within one degree of each other (cousins, for example). The few characterizations Lahiri made of Moushumi in the book sounded familiar in the sense that those details could be related to many young women I had met in the community: insecurities about appearance, strict parents, enforced piano lessons, rules about clothing, etc. Some of those attributes could have been applied to me during my stifling and confused teen years.
Knowing that the “female counterpart” to Gogol is possibly based on the author only reinforces the premise that she’s drawn the plot from similar scenes in her life. However, it doesn’t help that Lahiri misses possibilities for exploring the intergenerational conflicts amongst immigrants today. The movie downsizes Moushumi’s role and we’re only left with the “bad Indian girl” stereotype.
One other interesting tidbit: there were numerous homages to Satyajit Ray’s 1960 film, “Devi” throughout the film version of Lahiri’s novel. Nair, however, topples the cliche when we see Moushumi and Gogol finally alone together after their wedding. This makes sense since they’re a) hardly seeing one another for the first time and b) not shy about conjugal relations. But instead of exploring the modern couple’s “wedding,” she injects it with a parody of Hindi filmsongs. If only Nair realized (and maybe she does, which is why this is potentially humorous) how much Bengalis castigate Bollywood panache (a shame to do so, since the filmies are a vibrant, growing part of a “national” identity), then she might have stayed away from the allusion altogether.