The Namesake
Year of release: 2007
Directed by: Mira Nair
United States, India, Japan
Family drama about Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a Bengali couple who emigrate from Calcutta to New York in the late 1970s, where their two children, Gogol and Sonia, are born.
Gogol, named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, struggles to accept his unusual name and the expectations that come with it and his Indian heritage. He falls in love with two women, the WASP Maxine, who finds it impossible to relate to the Indian values (e.g. the ritual of collective mourning after Ashoke's death) which continue to play an important part in the Gangulis family decades after they have settled for good in America. But Moushumi, who is like Gogol of Indian descent and whom Gogol marries, turns out to be rather too Westernised as well for the marriage to last.
By contrasting Gogol's experiences as a second-generation Indian American with regard to love, family and his career, with those of his parents, the film develops an emotionally powerful portrait of generational differences and family life in diaspora.
Filed under: Fathers | Inter-ethnic romance | Mothers | Sons | South Asian diaspora | Wedding / Marriage