Re: ‘The Namesake’ - Beautiful and consistently empathetic
Economist has a nice essay on this movie
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8892559
ONE OF the many memorable scenes in “The Namesake”, an excellent new film based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s book and directed by Mira Nair of “Monsoon Wedding” fame, deals with a young Bengali bride and a bowl of Rice Krispies. The young woman has swapped her happy life and extended family in Calcutta for an arranged marriage and a lonely apartment in New York. When her husband, Ashoke Ganguli, leaves home early to work on his PhD thesis, she 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.
“The Namesake” is a moving study of the human side of immigration. But it is also a success story. Mr Ganguli snags an academic job, fathers two perfect children, moves to the suburbs and acquires an entourage of Bengali friends. His son, who is lumbered with the name Gogol Ganguli, studies architecture at Yale and acquires an All-American girlfriend, rich, blonde and well-connected.
Mr Ganguli is part of a huge army of immigrants who have brought their brains and enthusiasm to the United States—not just Indians and Pakistanis but also Chinese, Koreans and Europeans. America’s high-tech industries are powered by foreign brains. Almost a third of Silicon Valley start-ups since 1995 were founded by Indians or Chinese. They also power America’s great universities, particularly the science departments. About 40% of people earning PhDs in computer science and engineering are foreign-born.
Missing two worlds
This raises once again the main theme of “The Namesake”—the human side of immigration. The film reminds its audience that immigration is a traumatic experience as well as a liberating one. This is not just because leaving the rest of your family half a world away is hard. It is also because it poses difficult questions of identity.
Mr Ganguli and his wife find their children becoming strangers to them—revelling in American pop culture and embarrassed by the Bengali community’s idiosyncratic ways. But the children also endure a hidden war between their Bengali and American selves. Gogol at first turns his back on his immigrant family, finding it much more glamorous to hang out with his girlfriend’s family in Manhattan and Oyster Bay, before rediscovering his Bengali roots when his father dies. His mother returns to Calcutta with an immigrant’s lament: she has spent the past 25 years missing India and will spend the next 25 missing America.
“The Namesake” is worth watching for many reasons. It is a compelling study of personal identity. It features some of the most talented Indian actors in the business. But it is also an excuse for a thought experiment: imagine how much poorer America would be without the likes of Mr Ganguli.