463 - The Namesake, United States/India, 2006. Dir. Mira Nair.

Sunday, April 8, 2018

463 - The Namesake, United States/India, 2006.  Dir. Mira Nair.

Ashoke Ganguly is reading "The Overcoat" while riding a train.  Ashoke loves books.  He loves reading.

"The Overcoat" is a Russian short story published by the Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852).  Published in 1842.

None other than Fyodor Dostoyevsky himself says "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat.'"

Ashoke is a smart boy, filled with hope and wonder, and he enjoys traveling in his imagination.

His grandfather taught him how.  And inspired him.

"That's what books are for.  You can travel the world and never move an inch."

A man on the train talks to him.  Asks him how much he travels.

"I went to Delhi once."

Then, "Every year I visit my grandfather in Jamshedpur."

The man says, No, he does not mean "this world."  He means England.  America.  He himself lived in England for two years, where nobody spoke Urdu.  "It was like a dream.  The sparkling King Street."

He asks Ashoke if he has ever thought about going abroad.  Ashoke says No.  The man says, "You should.  You are young.  You are free.  You will never regret it."

You are young.  You are free.  You will never regret it.

Then the train derails.

We will learn more about that later in the film.

This ostensibly chance encounter changes Ashoke's life forever.


Ashima is a young Bengali woman engaged in an arranged marriage.  She does have some choice too.  A choice among a few options.

She arrives to meet the suitor.  See his shoes at the door.  "Made in the USA."  She puts her feet in them.  Walks a few steps.  Takes them off.  Then she enters the room.  Sits on the floor.

She is shy, as she has been trained to be.

The parents begin the negotiations.

"She is fond of cooking.  And she can knit well.  She made a cardigan for me in one week."

"My son has been living abroad for the last two years.  He's in New York.  He has done his PhD."

Her best subject is English.  They ask her to recite some poetry.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd

The man's father interrupts her:  A host of golden daffodils!

The poem is by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).  The most celebrated of the Romantic poets. 

They ask if she will be able to fly halfway across the world and live in a cold city with freezing winters while leaving behind her family and friends.

Ashima states simply, "Won't he be there?"


Ashoke and Ashima go to New York and make a new life.  It begins awkwardly, sometimes painfully, but it develops into a sustainable lifelong love.

They have a baby boy.

What will you name him?

They are not in a hurry.

In this country you must have a birth certificate to leave the hospital, and you must have a name to place on the birth certificate.

We could call him Gogol.

Gogol is a beautiful boy, and age four his father takes him out to the edge of a rocky jetty.

They give him the "good name" of Nikhel, but when he starts school he chooses to go by Gogol.

Later he regrets it.  And he spends much of the rest of the movie trying to find himself.  Trying to live his American life with Bengali parents trying to pull him back to his heritage.

The Namesake follows this family through two generations, through their joys and sorrows, their struggles and conflicts, and finally through their healing and understanding.

It does not follow a narrative arc so much as it tells the story one memorable life stage at a time.

There are moments when you feel you are in the good hands of a good director, and moments when you feel the love she must have in her heart for families.

She herself seems to have a big heart.

When it is all said and done she leaves an epitaph.

For our parents, who gave us everything.