So I just read the review of The Namesake in the NYT and am predictably irritated by how cheesy it sounds. I didn't love the book so my disappointment in the review does not come from high expectations. I think I am just disappointed that the "betwixt and between cultures" theme is so stagnant. I think Jhumpa Lahiri has written some great short stories and she does meticulous Bengali-American ethnography, but The Namesake didn't hold together for me because the characters, especially Gogol (played by Kal Penn), are not given inner lives. We want to like them but we don't know who they are. What do they want? We are expected to believe Gogol is a nice guy (architect) who is struggling to please his parents. We need to infer most of this from vignettes about dating white women and his relationship with Maushumi, a grad student in French or cultural studies (something with Derrida). As I am writing this I realize that it isn't so outrageous to think that a mediocre book with a few subtle lessons about the generation gap in immigrant families would translate into a mediocre movie with obvious lessons about cultural hybridity.
I still plan on watching it in the next 48 hours.
