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The Namesake

Not all novels work as films. Some appeal to our intellects and imaginations in ways that only the printed word can do; others simply involve too much detail and story for a feature film to encompass. Although I haven’t read Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, named one of the best of its year by the New York Times among others, I suspect that the problem with the new film made from it falls in the later category. A tale of immigrant angst spanning two generations, it crams in endless amounts of story without finding a cinematic pulse to connect it. The story begins in the mid-1970s with the arranged marriage in Calcutta of Ashoke and Ashima (Bollywood stars Irrfan Khan and Tabu). He is a Bengali living in New York City who, having just earned his PhD in fiber optics, has returned home to get married; she is a trained singer who is barely able to conceal her interest in leaving India for America. From there the film moves in fits and starts over the decades to the late 1990s, where it comes to focus on their son Gogol (a respectable dramatic turn from Kal Penn, better known for comedies like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle). Chafing at having been named after a “weird” Russian author (for reasons whose eventual revelation barely justify the secrecy with which Ashoke treats them), Gogol considers himself a thoroughbred American. But as he makes his own way in the world he discovers that the ties that bound his parents to the land of their birth have a pull on him as well. The Namesake is obviously a heartfelt effort from filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala), who was born in India and educated at Harvard. There isn’t anything specific you can fault about the movie, which is filled with persuasive details and winning performances. It simply never catches fire: it could as easily have ended at three or four points before it eventually does, or gone on to follow this family through another decade without making much difference.



Operation Homecoming

If war is hell, it must partly be because it is unending, chaotic and incomprehensible to those in it. Most of us are lucky enough not to know that from first hand experience. But it is expressed poignantly, forcefully and even poetically in this unique and moving documentary. I know that some of you are saying, “Please, not another documentary about Iraq.” But this is less a film about the Iraq conflict than it is about the universality of men at war, albeit expressed through the point of view of soldiers most recently caught up in battle. As directed by Richard E. Robbins, who formerly worked with newsman Peter Jennings and whose production company is dedicated to carrying on in Jennings’ memory, Operation Homecoming sprang from a National Endowment for the Arts program to encourage members of the military to put their experiences into writing. The film interviews some of these, along with older writers who served in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam. And it offers their stories and journals, reenacted in visually variant ways that are compelling without diminishing the force of the written word (as read by professional actors). Without taking a stand on the current conflict, the results dispel some of the hoarier clichés about war while opening your imagination to look at in unexpected ways. It will almost certainly make you regard any veteran you know in a new and different light.





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