A thought provoker - Namesake..

dont know how many of you have seen 'the namesake' - its one of the more thought provoking movies ive seen lately .. which to me automatically classifies a serious movie as good..

The plot overall is pretty simple - and meaningful.. and in patches very relevant to me .. whether it is the guy who goes abroad to work leaving family and frends abroad, to having a partner who doesnt want to leave her country.. to the guy who goes through the cycle of being indifferent to his roots to finally realising that it is in-separable from him..

From a story and direction pov, rarely have I seen any movie give that much space for the granular characterisation of as many as 3 characters - Irfan, Tabu and Kal.. each ones character is sculpted out right through the movie.. and the best thing is none of these were simple 1D views, the characterisation was done in multiple lights... A quick para on each of the characters follows:

Ashima: Tabu turned in a good performance - playing the to-be-wed bengali next door girl with as much grace and elan as the mom of two who has lost everything in life the day her husband died ... i like the way her maturity visibly progresses with the movie and ends with her courageous decision to go back to India :)

What did her character make me think :
- Importance of conditioning and influence: Look at the difference in her reaction to her dads death and then to her husbands.. and how it showed Ashokes influence on her when he says 'uve got to be strong - for ur family and kids...' - she really displays that in the end when Ashoke passes away
- Compromises work - to a degree: Her move to the US was a compromise of sorts - but it worked in the long term.
- One day ill get a chance to do what i really want :) - she got to sing in the end didnt she? one day i will be the manager of the Man U :)

Ashoke: My fav character of the movie.. serious, caring and a thinker - i loved the scene where he comes to gogols room and tells him.. 'one day ull realise - we are all from Gogols overcoat'. In the scene when he calls Ashima from cleaveland - I found myself praying that he doesnt die after that - truly powerful acting to create a really strong link with the viewer..

Key thoughts from his character:
- Gratitude/Rememberance of where it all started from: ive never really thought of what was the turning point in my academic/professional life - and it would be amazing to know and recognise that - just as Ashoke does about the book 'gogol' and that train journey
- Simple is good : self explanatory i think :)

Gogol: Brilliant acting here i think - especially in the transition from ABCD gogol to some1 who understood his roots..and more importantly was comfy with it.. The transformation at his dads funderal is a classic one i think .. in one stroke pulling him from a world of holidaying with his GFs family to his own grieving family ..

Key thoughts from his character:
- Roots are called roots for a reason: blood runs thicker than water :)
- My state of misery cannot be an excuse to hurt some1 else: The way he treated his amrikkan gf was pretty sad - after all that she was doing to integrate in.. the unfairness of that was sidelined in the movie in the face of bigger things - but it was unfair..
- Dont ignore what u dont understand - he didnt understand gogol - and the reason behind it - till his dad told him and blah blah.. makes even more sense in the light of my conversation with spunky yesterday (conversation will not be recounted for relationship maintaining reasons :p)

anyways.. enough bakwaas about the movie.. last thing - loved the authentic bengali accents and not the exagerated crappy ones in a million other movies..