A review by M.G. Wood

Release Date: November 27th, 2007, Edition: Standard Release, MPAA Rating: PG13, Runtime: 114, Minutes Studio: 20th Century Fox

In 1988, after directing several documentaries including SO FAR FROM INDIA and INDIA CABARET, Mira Nair helmed one of the most impressive feature film debuts of the late 20th century with SALAAM BOMBAY!, a film about children living on the streets of Bombay, living more like adults than children; suffering more like adults, unable to display any vulnerability like a child. Part Dickensian fable and part sociological docu-drama, SALAAM BOMBAY! captured the hearts and minds the world over. Nominated for the Best Foreign Feature Academy Award, losing to the mostly forgotten wet rag of a family drama PELLE THE CONQUEROR, SALAAM BOMBAY! set Mira Nair on course as one of a small handful of young filmmakers to watch.

Ms. Nair followed with two American films MISSISSIPPI MASALA in 1991 and THE PEREZ FAMILY in 1995. Both were very good films, but neither captured the unique color, emotion, and power of her debut. After a failed attempt to translate the infamous sex guide Kama Sutra into a linear romantic film in 1996 with KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE, Mira Nair seemed to be wandering.

Then in 2001 Mira Nair made a triumphant return to form with MONSOON WEDDING, a glorious and beautiful romantic comedy centering around the hysterical and convoluted events leading to a daughter’s arranged wedding in India. The film was a world-wide hit with critics and audiences, thus leading to a re-discovery of Nair as a potent filmmaker.

Nair capitalized on her new-found or re-found attention to make a big-budget costume epic starring Hollywood “it-girl” Reese Witherspoon, Thackeray’s VANITY FAIR. With a sharp script co-authored by the brilliant Oscar winning writer Julian Fellowes (GOSFORD PARK), and Nair’s keen eye for detail, 2004’s VANITY FAIR turned out to be one the better Reese Witherspoon vehicles. Mira Nair took a 19th century novel and made few changes, rather she extracted the inherent Indian elements already embedded within every classic English experience, and amplified the color and flavor to paint a radiant portrait.

Since her feature film debut nearly 20 years ago, Mira Nair’s native India has been transformed by the advent of globalization. India has become a Mecca for telemarketing. Large corporations have taken advantage of a poor but ambitious populous in their ever-increasing need to keep up with the Dow Jones. Getting paid sometimes as much as $250 a month, Indians are trained to speak in American accents and change their names to more American sounding names like Joe and Sue and Sam and Mike.

Based on a best-selling novel written by Jhumpa Lahiri, THE NAMESAKE tells the story of newly married immigrants Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli and their two children as they struggle to assimilate and advance in America.

Ashoke Ganguli played by Irfan Khan had already been in America before he returned to India to meet his bride. In an early scene we see a nervous Ashima (Tabu) slowly walk up to the room where her soon-to-be husband is meeting her parents. Standing outside the room listening, she looks down to notice Ashoke’s patent leather shoes, printed inside the shoes are the words “Made in USA”. Ashima slips her feet into the shoes and smiles.

In America Ashoke tells his wife Asmima that in their apartment “you have gas 24 hours a day” and “water straight from the tap” for tea. The Gangulis have their first child and give him the temporary name Nicolas Gogol, named after Ashoke’s favorite author. Time passes and the family has moved up to the suburbs; Gogol is still the son’s name and he is now an obnoxious teenager fighting with his equally obnoxious sister Sonia; the American dream has been realized.

Gogol is played by Kal Penn, in a decidedly dramatic change for the comedic actor (HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE, EPIC MOVIE), Penn is good as Gogol challenged by an American sense of entitlement and a family obligation to honor heritage. After a trip to India and a visit to the Taj Mahal, Gogol decides to be an architect.

Gogol is an architect in New York City, where he becomes involved with a beautiful blond named Maxine (Jacinda Barrett). Gogol is hobnobbing with the upper-crust of society, going to dinner in fancy restaurants, becoming fully entrenched in a decidedly Anglo-Saxon world devoid of any discernable color. Gogol and Maxine do seem happy. The film avoids characterizing Maxine as a snobby racist, instead portrays a fully dimensional woman trying to hold on to Gogol even as he begins to slowly dissolve away, thereby making the break all the more poignant.

After his father dies, Gogol shaves his head in an act of purification, sending him on a journey of self-discovery. But, what appears at first to be noble soon begins to take on a somewhat contrived feel, markedly in Gogol’s disingenuous split with Maxine.

Upon Gogol’s return to New York his mother suggests he have tea with a girl he once met in an apparent set-up for marriage. The girl he remembers is a nerdy girl with glasses and frizzy hair and a dislike of American television.

Gogol agrees to meet the girl, if only to please his grieving mother. The tea turns out to be a martini and a scotch, and the “girl” named Moushumi played by Zuleikha Robinson turns out to be smokin’ hot. It’s lust at first sight, they fall into bed, they marry. Intermittent between rounds of passionate sex Moushumi tells Gogol of her sexual awakening in Paris and we soon learn this to be foreshadowing; for how do you keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?

THE NAMESAKE opens with Gogol’s father as a young man riding a train. Ashoke sits in a cramped train compartment attempting to read his book by Nikolas Gogol amid the jostling and the unwanted interruptions. Just before the train wrecks, an old man in the compartment with Ashoke leans over and says, “Go see the world, you will not regret it”.

THE NAMESAKE ends with Gogol on a train after having read those very words inscribed in a copy of Nikolas Gogol left to him by his father.

If there is anything outside the beauty and majesty of Mira Nair’s work, it is that for 2 hours her films will take you out of your world and into another, and you will not regret it.

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