A film by Mira Nair, director of Monsoon Wedding
The story spans two generations and is set in two cities: Calcutta and New York, in the words of the director, ‘as if they are one’. After an arranged marriage, a Bengali couple move to New York but maintain a connection with their traditional Hindu values; for their son this is more tenuous and his unspoken question through his rebellious teenage years and life as a young professional architect is, ‘Where do I belong?’ We see the way his appearance changes as he assumes different roles and identities, his confusion epitomised in the pet name ‘Gogol’ that he was given at birth by his father, from which he tries to escape but which eventually takes on a meaningful significance for him.
Mira Nair says she felt compelled to make the film, based on a novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, after experiencing a loss within her own family. This perhaps accounts for the poignancy of moments of loss and parting, conveyed through haunting music and images that recall the sensitivity of Satyajit Ray’s great Bengali films. We experience the aging and maturing of the characters; the clash of cultures but continuing ties between the generations; restrained and undemonstrative but heartfelt and tender feeling; isolation and loneliness but also the alone self awareness that is a prerequisite for creativity; both the growing away from family and reconciliation – it is in more ways than one, a family film.
Lesley Croome
