Accomplished and acclaimed Indian filmmaker Mira Nair's films have often crossed
cultures. In this Fox Searchlight adaptation of Jhumpa
Lahiri's major international bestseller The Namesake, Nair (Vanity
Fair, Kama Sutra, Monsoon
Wedding) vividly portrays a Hindu family's reality in America. As the
director herself says: "It encompasses, in a deep humane way, the tale
of millions of us who have left one home for another, who have known what it
is to combine the old ways with the new world, who have left the shadow of our
parents to find ourselves for the first time."
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'The Namesake' Photo Gallery
The Tangle that Binds
In her most personal film to date, Nair brings to the screen a poignant and
transporting version of Lahiri's novel, which won reader's hearts across the
world with its exploration of the ties that can both tangle and bind global
families as they brave the modern vicissitudes of change, conflict and disaster.
Tale of a US Hindu Family
Spanning two generations, two clashing cultures and two very different ways
of life that crash into each other only to become lovingly intertwined, The
Namesake is ultimately about that imminently relevant question: what does
it mean to be an American family? In the words of the film's screenwriter Sooni
Taraporevala, The Namesake is a family portrait that reveals individual
lives, which separate and then merge as they are carried towards their destinies."
Read an Excerpt from the Novel
Jumping between the equally colorful and vibrant cities of Calcutta and New York, The Namesake is definitely a family drama, but it's about a very different kind of contemporary American family. The film maps the lives of a Bengali Brahmin family, the Gangulis, who came to the U.S. from India in order to experience a world of limitless opportunities - only to be confronted with the perils and confusion of trying to build a meaningful life in a baffling new society. Living in America, Ashoke and Ashima haven't transformed into Americans. Their son, Gogol, on the other hand, is growing up in America, stumbling along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.
A Story that Hits Home
On the heels of their arranged marriage, Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu)
jet off from steaming Calcutta to a wintry New York where they begin their new
life together. Virtual strangers to one another - like most newly wed Hindu couples, and now living in what is to
them a very strange land, their relationship quickly takes a turn when Ashima
gives birth to a son. Under pressure to name him quickly, Ashoke settles on
Gogol, after the famous Russian author - a name that serves as a link to a secret
past and, Ashoke hopes, a better future. But life isn't as easy for Gogol as
his parents might wish.
As a first-generation American teenager, Gogol (Kal Penn) must learn to tread a razor-thin line between his Hindu roots and his American birthright in the search for his own identity. As Gogol attempts to forge his destiny - rejecting his given name, dating a rich American girl (Jacinda Barrett), heading to study architecture at Yale - his parents cling to their Bengali Hindu traditions. But their paths keep crossing with both comic and painfully revelatory consequences... until Gogol begins to see the links between the world his parents left behind and the new world that lies in front of him.
Banner: UTV Motion Pictures
Producer: Lydia Dean Pilcher
Director: Mira Nair
Cast: Kal Penn, Tabu, Irrfan Khan, Jacinda Barrett
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Release date: March 2007
