THE NAMESAKE

Director: Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, Salaam Bombay)
Starring: Irfan Khan, Kal Penn, Tabu

Has it really been a month since my last movie? Nope. But it has been a month since I've had the free time to write a review that's even semi-literate. So let's try and catch up a bit, shall we? On to The Namesake.

Mira Nair is one of the best female directors working today. And don't mistake my inserting that "female" in the sentence as diluting the praise. Ms. Nair is a supremely successful and talented director, gender aside. As there are no more than a handful of female directors at all, however, I think her feminine success is even more notable. She's in the vanguard of an (hopefully) growing army of higher-profile women filmmakers along with Sofia Coppola. Yes, you might add Julie Taymor to that duo, but her noteriety stems more from her stage-work than her film projects. Regardless, women - they're starting to get their directorial shot.

I was a big fan of Monsoon Wedding, the ABCD (American-born, confused Desi) tale of Western children and Indian parents. It was delightful in every way. The Namesake is yet another story of conflict and compromise between the generations, and cultures, of Indian parents and their Americanized kids. This story, however, is not quite so bright, is not so cheery, is not so sweet. It is loving, and tender, and caring, but it's also a little painful. It is a sweet and wonderful little movie.

Gogol (Penn) is born in an American city, and raised in its suburbia. He is an American. Gogol, of course, is not a very subcontinental name. He got the moniker due to his parent's confusion with a quirky American system that forces the parents to name their child before they could get instructions from the grandmother, as is the proper method of his culture. Gogol is the father's favorite author.

As the boy grows up, and enters the time of his rebellious youth, he learns more about his namesake. Gogol was a depressed and sickly man, strange, but brilliant, who eventually starved himself to death. Young Gogol comes to hate his name and rejects it, in a sense rejecting his parents choices and desires. He dates a rich, blond art-child, the daughter of a curator at the Met. Her wealth and lifestyle provide tastes of freedoms he's never known in the structured, traditional and middle-class world of his parents. He is told to date these girls, to live his life, to sample the culture of America ... but that if he wants to be happy he should marry an Indian.

Surprisingly (to me at least), he does just that. Even more surprisingly (to me at least) this ends painfully. He eventually marries a sexy Hindi girl, a one-time nerdish bookworm who apparently found out about fashion and makeup while in college. This seems perfect for all involved. She is westernized. She is beautiful. She is intelligent, and talented, and successful. It turns out she's also selfish and arrogant. He comes to hate her intellectually fashionable urbanite friends (as we all should), and she eventually leaves him.

So, in this entire review I've basically been telling you about the young man, Gogol, who would seem to be the center of this story, but he isn't. This story I think, is really about his parents. It's about their sacrifices, about their dreams, about their successes and failures, about their picture of him and how he misunderstands it. Irfan Khan plays the father, a sweet, calm, quiet man, willing to subjugate himself for the future of his children. Tabu plays the mother, equally resilient, as quiet and accepting of her fate as his her culture. This sweet story of a boy learning about himself and where he's come from, is very much the story of these parents trying so hard for their children. Yes, these people may be a bit too perfect, and the story a bit too concerned with the definitions derived from names, but in the end it's just a sweet story of sacrifice and love. And as Martha Stewart would say (who has no relationship with this review at all ...), that's a good thing.

Standouts: A sweet story, fine acting, and very good direction equal a good movie.
Blowouts: I don't think the movie missed in any significant way. Nothing was perfect of course, but nothing was a real failure either.

Grade: B+