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The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film Based on the Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri
Original essays and glorious photography, stunningly designed in this unique moviebook from the director of Monsoon Wedding and Vanity Fair a Fox Searchlight release.
In her essay "Writing and Film," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri writes about the experience of seeing her novel "transposed" from paper to film. "Its essence remains, but it inhabits a different realm and must, like a transposed piece of music, conform to a different set of rules. . . . To have someone as devoted and as gifted as Mira reinvent my novel . . . has been a humbling and thrilling passage."
Mira Nair's essay, "Photographs as Inspiration," begins with the provocative comment: "If it weren't for photography, I wouldn't be a filmmaker." She explains how photographs help her crystallize the visual style of her films and which particular photos influenced her vision for The Namesake.
These two essays, written exclusively for this Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook, introduce an amazing panoply of images of people and places shot mainly in New York and Calcutta during the making of the movie, accented by excerpts from Lahiri's bestselling novel. Six Indian and American photographers' works are represented.
Brilliantly illuminating the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations, The Namesake tells the story of the Ganguli family, whose move from Calcutta to New York evokes a lifelong balancing act to adapt to a new world while remembering the old. The couple's firstborn, Gogol, and sister Sonia grow up amid these divided loyalties, struggling to find their own identity without losing their heritage. Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Superman Returns) stars as Gogol."
In her essay "Writing and Film," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri writes about the experience of seeing her novel "transposed" from paper to film. "Its essence remains, but it inhabits a different realm and must, like a transposed piece of music, conform to a different set of rules. . . . To have someone as devoted and as gifted as Mira reinvent my novel . . . has been a humbling and thrilling passage."
Mira Nair's essay, "Photographs as Inspiration," begins with the provocative comment: "If it weren't for photography, I wouldn't be a filmmaker." She explains how photographs help her crystallize the visual style of her films and which particular photos influenced her vision for The Namesake.
These two essays, written exclusively for this Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook, introduce an amazing panoply of images of people and places shot mainly in New York and Calcutta during the making of the movie, accented by excerpts from Lahiri's bestselling novel. Six Indian and American photographers' works are represented.
Brilliantly illuminating the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations, The Namesake tells the story of the Ganguli family, whose move from Calcutta to New York evokes a lifelong balancing act to adapt to a new world while remembering the old. The couple's firstborn, Gogol, and sister Sonia grow up amid these divided loyalties, struggling to find their own identity without losing their heritage. Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Superman Returns) stars as Gogol."
144 pages, Hardcover
Published December 18, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
June 1, 2008
I think Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the Namesake to illustrate the struggle of immigrants in harsh and helpless environments. She wanted to show how difficult it is for first generation immigrants to adapt to a totally new environment without any assistance. From the main character Ashima’s life in the United States, we could clearly sense the lonesome and nostalgia of new immigrants who left their homeland with reluctance. Over the thirty years of life in America, Ashima strived to maintain her heritage as a Bengali wife while the American style of life gradually influenced various aspects of her life. Lahiri’s story also depicts the thrilling journey of finding one's identity between two cultures. The facts that Gogol didn't like his names and he refused to live the Indian way that his parents expected him to live both show that everyone has a unique way of adapting and choosing his/ her identity. Gogol’s journey of finding his identity delineates that the environment and surrounding where a person grows up can have a significant impact on one’s way of thinking, learning and living. No matter how hard his parents tried to insert the Indian culture into Gogol’s mind, the American custom and the way to live still greatly appealed to him. From the overall story, I learned that it is definitely difficult for immigrants to fit into a new environment and adapt to a new culture without losing their beloved heritage. As an immigrant from Calcutta herself, Jhumpa Lahiri certainly did a good job in writing a fascinating story of a family of immigrants. I believed countless immigrants can find their voice in the story.
February 28, 2020
Cast: Tabu, Irrfan Khan, Kal Penn, Zuleikha Robinson, Jacinda Barrett, Sahira Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri
Director: Mira Nair
Indulging in the quest of realising one’s identity and striving for integration are at the core of The Namesake. Mira Nair’s ninth feature film and an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s true-to-life novel, this Indian-American drama is all that a good movie is expected to be - compelling and riveting. The film screens the struggles of a Bengali couple - the Gangulis, who are first generation immigrants from the East Indian state of West Bengal to the United States. Set against the backdrop of the 1975 Calcutta, the movie commences with a train journey to Jamshedpur, where the Calcutta born, Bengali-speaking Ashoke Ganguli (played by Irrfan Khan) meets a fellow-traveler, Ghosh, who impresses upon him the idea of traveling the world, while Ashoke is deep into a book authored by the Russian author Nicholai Gogol. That train journey, however, ends in an accident.
Later, Ashoke relocates to America and settles down there.
Soon after, Ashima (played by Tabu), a young Bengali girl and an aspiring singer, is introduced to Ashoke as her prospective husband, and they decide to tie the knot. The newlyweds then move to New York where they further discover each other and discover love, meanwhile trying to blend themselves into the American culture. Shortly thereafter, they become parents of a boy called Gogol, and a few years down the line, comes along their daughter, Sonia. The Gangulis buy their own house in the suburbs and travel to India for the first time after their marriage as the unfortunate news of Ashima’s father’s death is floated to them.
The movie follows this couple for about 25 years, as they see their two children planting their roots deep in the Western soil. Crammed up in only 2 hours, the almost 3 decades long story then gradually shifts the spotlight to the first-born and the only son of the Gangulis, Gogol (played by Kal Penn), who is a namesake of Ashoke’s favourite author. He is initially christened with that name as a Daak Naam (or a nickname or descriptive name), until later when “Gogol” also ends up being his good name. In his teenage years, as he is subjected to mockery and derision due to his name, Gogol comes to detest it and often gets on his father’s case for giving him such an outlandish, bizarre name. As he graduates high school, he changes his name to his original good name Nikhil (or Nicky), inspired by Nicholai Gogol’s own first name.
But as Gogol’s father keeps telling him, there is a reason behind that name. He often mentions Gogol’s short story The Overcoat in which the protagonist also has a laughable name. The reason for the name is revealed much later in the movie by Khan’s character before he leaves for a teacher apprenticeship in Ohio for six months. How this American boy of Indian origin acquired the name of a Russian author becomes the matter of a family legend.
The family’s second visit to India takes place when Gogol and Sonia are in their late teens. As they return home after a memorable visit to Kolkata followed by a tour of the magnificent Taj Mahal, Gogol finds himself a little closer to the culture of his native country and begins appreciating it. He falls deep in awe looking at the divine architectural structure of Taj Mahal, so much so that he decides to pursue architecture himself.
Some more years thereafter, Gogol, who has by then become an architect, dates Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a white woman from a wealthy background. A stark contrast between the two cultures is brought out as they both meet one another’s parents, although Gogol looks more comfortable in the American way of life carried out by Maxine’s family as he is more familiar to it. With a more intimate, forward, radical and progressive American culture on his one had, and his parents’ much revered, albeit conservative Indian traditions on the other, Gogol remains in state of dilemma and quandary. In his endeavour to maintain a delicate balance between his two hands and the constant to and fro, he has to go through several internal conflicts and at last breaks up with Maxine.
Gogol later marries Moushumi (played by Zuleikha Robinson) as suggested by his mother. Being the daughter of their Bengali family friends settled in the States, she is expected to pull off an ideal Bengali wife. But sadly, it turns out that the second generation immigrants do not always follow the script of their parents. And that being Bengali is not enough to sustain a marriage. Things do not work well between the couple, and Gogol finally divorces Moushumi.
Now, bringing into light the filmatography and the execution of the plot, one can undoubtedly say that Nair has done her job as a filmmaker just as brilliantly as the actors have carried out their roles, especially those in the lead. Squeezing a time frame of 20-25 years into 2 hours made the movie episodic in nature, but regardless of its fast and leaping pace, Mira Nair has remarkably presented the story without making it feel rushed, contrived or incomplete. With her commendable display of a juxtaposition between Calcutta and New York, she has won the hearts of her audiences. This beautifully filmed movie has set an unprecedented example of modernity and tradition at a cultural crossroad. From the colours of the opening credits to the background scores and the closing track, everything seems spot on, making the movie a genuine masterpiece.
The Namesake illustrates a story that belongs to most Indian immigrant groups in America: Parents of great daring arriving with dreams, children growing up in a way that makes them almost strangers, the old culture merging with the new. Roger Ebert rightly states, “It has been said that all modern Russian literature came out of Gogol’s Overcoat. In the same way, all of us come out of the overcoat of this same immigrant experience.”
Director: Mira Nair
Indulging in the quest of realising one’s identity and striving for integration are at the core of The Namesake. Mira Nair’s ninth feature film and an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s true-to-life novel, this Indian-American drama is all that a good movie is expected to be - compelling and riveting. The film screens the struggles of a Bengali couple - the Gangulis, who are first generation immigrants from the East Indian state of West Bengal to the United States. Set against the backdrop of the 1975 Calcutta, the movie commences with a train journey to Jamshedpur, where the Calcutta born, Bengali-speaking Ashoke Ganguli (played by Irrfan Khan) meets a fellow-traveler, Ghosh, who impresses upon him the idea of traveling the world, while Ashoke is deep into a book authored by the Russian author Nicholai Gogol. That train journey, however, ends in an accident.
Later, Ashoke relocates to America and settles down there.
Soon after, Ashima (played by Tabu), a young Bengali girl and an aspiring singer, is introduced to Ashoke as her prospective husband, and they decide to tie the knot. The newlyweds then move to New York where they further discover each other and discover love, meanwhile trying to blend themselves into the American culture. Shortly thereafter, they become parents of a boy called Gogol, and a few years down the line, comes along their daughter, Sonia. The Gangulis buy their own house in the suburbs and travel to India for the first time after their marriage as the unfortunate news of Ashima’s father’s death is floated to them.
The movie follows this couple for about 25 years, as they see their two children planting their roots deep in the Western soil. Crammed up in only 2 hours, the almost 3 decades long story then gradually shifts the spotlight to the first-born and the only son of the Gangulis, Gogol (played by Kal Penn), who is a namesake of Ashoke’s favourite author. He is initially christened with that name as a Daak Naam (or a nickname or descriptive name), until later when “Gogol” also ends up being his good name. In his teenage years, as he is subjected to mockery and derision due to his name, Gogol comes to detest it and often gets on his father’s case for giving him such an outlandish, bizarre name. As he graduates high school, he changes his name to his original good name Nikhil (or Nicky), inspired by Nicholai Gogol’s own first name.
But as Gogol’s father keeps telling him, there is a reason behind that name. He often mentions Gogol’s short story The Overcoat in which the protagonist also has a laughable name. The reason for the name is revealed much later in the movie by Khan’s character before he leaves for a teacher apprenticeship in Ohio for six months. How this American boy of Indian origin acquired the name of a Russian author becomes the matter of a family legend.
The family’s second visit to India takes place when Gogol and Sonia are in their late teens. As they return home after a memorable visit to Kolkata followed by a tour of the magnificent Taj Mahal, Gogol finds himself a little closer to the culture of his native country and begins appreciating it. He falls deep in awe looking at the divine architectural structure of Taj Mahal, so much so that he decides to pursue architecture himself.
Some more years thereafter, Gogol, who has by then become an architect, dates Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a white woman from a wealthy background. A stark contrast between the two cultures is brought out as they both meet one another’s parents, although Gogol looks more comfortable in the American way of life carried out by Maxine’s family as he is more familiar to it. With a more intimate, forward, radical and progressive American culture on his one had, and his parents’ much revered, albeit conservative Indian traditions on the other, Gogol remains in state of dilemma and quandary. In his endeavour to maintain a delicate balance between his two hands and the constant to and fro, he has to go through several internal conflicts and at last breaks up with Maxine.
Gogol later marries Moushumi (played by Zuleikha Robinson) as suggested by his mother. Being the daughter of their Bengali family friends settled in the States, she is expected to pull off an ideal Bengali wife. But sadly, it turns out that the second generation immigrants do not always follow the script of their parents. And that being Bengali is not enough to sustain a marriage. Things do not work well between the couple, and Gogol finally divorces Moushumi.
Now, bringing into light the filmatography and the execution of the plot, one can undoubtedly say that Nair has done her job as a filmmaker just as brilliantly as the actors have carried out their roles, especially those in the lead. Squeezing a time frame of 20-25 years into 2 hours made the movie episodic in nature, but regardless of its fast and leaping pace, Mira Nair has remarkably presented the story without making it feel rushed, contrived or incomplete. With her commendable display of a juxtaposition between Calcutta and New York, she has won the hearts of her audiences. This beautifully filmed movie has set an unprecedented example of modernity and tradition at a cultural crossroad. From the colours of the opening credits to the background scores and the closing track, everything seems spot on, making the movie a genuine masterpiece.
The Namesake illustrates a story that belongs to most Indian immigrant groups in America: Parents of great daring arriving with dreams, children growing up in a way that makes them almost strangers, the old culture merging with the new. Roger Ebert rightly states, “It has been said that all modern Russian literature came out of Gogol’s Overcoat. In the same way, all of us come out of the overcoat of this same immigrant experience.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 2, 2011
Excellent book, far better than the movie. I would read a sequel.
August 2, 2011
Kind of a downer..people die, cheat on each other, neglect family members. Besides that, not a bad story!
November 21, 2012
Beautiful illustration of immigrant struggles. Heartache of the next generation. The essence captured only by someone who has gone through this.
September 20, 2024
depressing
February 28, 2018
Jhumpa has a knack to get readers glue to the book to the end. The narration is quite riveting and the emotions involved are deeply touchy and moving. I don't know about it's true potential to others but to me reader can really get carried away by putting oneself into the character shoes and can get the feel as if it was him in the book and tend to imagine the situations in real life as if they had been happening to him for real.
Although I'm not a big fan of the way books culminate, most of the time. This is no exception as I've not felt quite satisfied to have been left with curiosity of the lives of characters beyond the book and neither can I conjure the possibility of a direction of the lives of them.
Overall a good read, I must say.
Although I'm not a big fan of the way books culminate, most of the time. This is no exception as I've not felt quite satisfied to have been left with curiosity of the lives of characters beyond the book and neither can I conjure the possibility of a direction of the lives of them.
Overall a good read, I must say.
September 1, 2015
After everyone going gaga over this book, I finally decided to give it a read. The writing is effortless but the book is surely over hyped. It deals with the very same immigrant issue. It's dull. The story revolving the parents is beautiful but since the son got into the picture it lost the magic. Seemed rushed on, I don't know.
February 7, 2015
How a name can torment a child, then youth, an adult and even during the later period? How one find solace in "No name" or get too much emotional with name "Gogol" is a nice depiction of emotional drama of a man.
A wonderful read.
A wonderful read.
May 15, 2015
A very detailed story on the plight of immigrants. I couldn't help but want some sort of drama out of it, but then again I never put it down. It was in some ways soothing then in some ways sad. All in all, an enjoyable book if you are looking for a laid back kinda book.
July 12, 2022
A familiar novel, tracing many experiences found amongst immigrants in the West irrespective of ethnicity. The Namesake questions and squirms at the sight of many answers, leaping often at the never ending unfolding of realities. It is a reflection of sorts.
March 20, 2008
Beautiful pictures from the set of the movie.
May 13, 2008
Could totally relate to it ....!!
May 26, 2008
I was waiting for a long time for Lahiri's novel, after loving her collection of short stories. This was really good and a moving tale of immigration, growing up, falling in and out of love, etc.
September 9, 2008
Loved this book as much as Maladies - Pulitzer Prize Winner!
The book is marvelous tales of 2 worlds of India and USA and far superior to the movie version.
The book is marvelous tales of 2 worlds of India and USA and far superior to the movie version.
November 11, 2008
Nice read.
May 30, 2012
I liked the movie book. Would watch the movie sometime!
Read
May 24, 2013This book was really good and sad. the main character was cheated on by his wife.Father died and the main character really misses him.
August 7, 2013
Love Jhumpa Lahiri, very nicely done.
Read
September 21, 2013Another beautifully written novel
March 16, 2014
Liked reading it...
January 18, 2015
Cultural experience
March 29, 2015
Read this book
February 20, 2016
I like it for the insight it give into a confused life in US and the cultural difference issues one faces when they shift their family there.
February 24, 2007
The gold lettering is too much.
May 31, 2013
I just loved this book. I read the "novel", however, not the movie version. Very tender story.
October 15, 2013
Terrific read; well written;offers great insight into the lives of second geneation immigrants.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews