Namesake “Personal” Review
Hi Folks,
Caught a press screening of Namesake yesterday. Like it or lump it, that is your prerogative as a viewer, what I can say is that this is not a movie you can remove immediately from your psyche. At least not from a South Asian American mindset. It lingers on well after the movie is over. It is melancholy and certainly not a “night out at the movies” type of a movie, more a “that came too close to comfort” type of a movie.
The real winner is the story. The real loser is the screenplay. It is way too long. The movie lingers on well past it’s natural end. That takes some of the effect away. Also there is no let up. It is one step at a time, in the ladder of the erieness that comes when moving from one culture to another. Also this is a story which I think will probably have the same effect to the NRI’s as, to the RI’s. But it is a sub continental story for sure. One that could play out in the lives of anyone from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc, why even from any part of Asia for that matter.
This was a directorial challenge and only a filmmaker of Mira’s caliber could do justice to it, which she does. The story though is not balanced. It is an extreme inner city Calcutta story to an extreme Jackson Heights, NY story. That is the author (Jhumpa Lahiri’s) prerogative, but that is something for the objective user to keep in perspective. It can also be argued that it is a story of the “non adapters and the price they pay for non adapting to their environment” kind of a story. Matter of fact the Calcutta in the film almost reminded me of the classical Calcutta stories like Saheb Bibi Aur Ghulam and Devdas (the older one) kind of stories. But the confusion in the mind of the viewer become more and this causes a lot more uneasiness, when one realizes that actually this is a family (the Ganguli family) that does indeed adapt……and yet……
The choices that the family makes are too real and too close for comfort for most immigrants to emphathise with. Yet this is not a story about “the difficulties of immigration,” it is more the story of the ever evolving human mind. We have heard of a generation gap, this is a story of a generation gap evolving in the same generation, in the same human mind. It is a story of how, we as Indians, face greater challenges as our enviroment changes. The movie highlights that we as Indians evolve and go through probably more “decade long mood swings” than most. Blame it on our past, analyze it in context to our present the complexity is all there.
Yet this film is also about optimism and the “go do it attitude too.” Tabu’s character discovers her limitless boundries and what she can do, at an age when her son is going through similar emotions. Achievement and the realization of self know no age and phase in life. This becomes the underlying theme in the film. This film has central characters, yet even the non central one’s are evolving and finding their true meaning.
Performance wise Tabu is competent in doing what she generally does best. Irfan’s characterization as a true blue Bengali is a realization of his achievement as a true actor. The surprise packet is Kal. I had never seen him in a non comedy role and was dreading seeing him when I saw in the opening credits that he is pitted against some real competent and complete actors like Tabu and Irfan, but credit it to the director, he blends in very well and shows why from that original team of American Desi, it is that afro talking comedian, who has shown brighter than the others. His range is getting better. I saw him straight after seeing him in Van Wilder and liked him there where he was funny and here where his role gets more progressively serious as the film dwelves deeper into it’s main subject matter.
Tabu’s final speech is short, yet more powerful and impactful than all the dramatics of Bollywood put together. The take on the Indian song by Kal and the character who plays his spouse was unnecessary though. His sister in the film, could have been given more “character,” but then the overall feeling is – This could have been my story!!! and that is the scary emotion with which one leaves the theater and whenever the reel world has the potential of playing itself out in the real world as early as 3 minutes after the movie has come to an end, it stays for 360 minutes in your psyche, actually 3600 minutes.
Sincerely,
Vivek “thoughtful, thoughtprovoking, real, intense…. too real” Kumar
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
March 9th release so waiting for it. But I guess this is where Kal can break from the mold of comic actor to being a much serious actor and considering the kind of work that is begin done here, he’s at the brink of a big break.
Vivek, I am in the mailing list of saafa but are there any more special screenings in the NY region?
Ravptor I got the invite from the Fox Searchlight folks so can ask them if there is another screening coming up in NYC. It will open the Cinequest Film Festival in SJ later in Feb. Yep this film should enable Kal to be considered for all kinds of roles, not necessarily only the comedy one’s
nice review vivek. kal did about as well as he could’ve.. me personally, didn’t notice him as much.. reasonably so, as i was too much in awe of irrfan..
i’m in two minds about going to see this movie, i loved every moment of the book, it’s one that will rank very highly on my reccommended lists .. but if the characters are bought to life and fail to meet expectations of how i’ve pictured them then i’d feel v dissapointed
i have just read the book. amazing..!
All i expect is that the movie lives upto it. time n again it has happened that the movie just cannot overpower & even compliment the book narrative. so plspls let this be an exception. great review though!
Sangeeta, looks like Namesake faces the same challenge that every director face when trying to cinematize any popular novel. Since the readers already have painted her/his own visualisations of the characters, expectations are always a different type than normally scripted movies.But from the initial reactions it seems Mira Nair might have lived to the expectation. Not sure when will it hit Singapore…but till then I’ve the book.
Bishu, that is natural in these circumstances. Hope the movie does do the book justice, i’ll be sure to review this when i get around to it