This is a generational family saga everyone can relate to, and Nair gives it her special magic. Although parents Ashoke and Ashima are proud of the sacrifices they make to give their children opportunities, their son Gogol strives to. But her ardor for the material matches her ambition. After moving from Calcutta to New York, members of the Ganguli family maintain a delicate balancing act between honoring the traditions of their native India and blending into American culture. Nair tries to shoehorn too much of a big novel into a small two-hour movie. It takes a family tragedy to give Gogol a sense of himself and his namesake. Gogol has identity problems, not solvable when he leaves the blonde for the Bengali beauty Moushumi (a zesty Zuleikha Robinson). The grown Gogol, played with ferocity and feeling by Kal Penn, of Harold and Kumar fame, turns his back on everything Indian, and not just by taking up with a blond socialite (Jacinda Barrett).
The birth of their son, Nikhil, who is given the pet name Gogol, after the Russian author Ashoke reveres, intensifies the cultural clash. American-born Gogol, the son of Indian immigrants, wants to fit in among his fellow New Yorkers, despite his family's unwillingness to let go of their traditional ways. In Calcutta, circa the 1970s, Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) agree o an arranged marriage and to ting their new lives in Manhattan. With Kal Penn, Tabu, Irrfan Khan, Jacinda Barrett. Cultural assimilation is a specialty for Mira Nair, the India-born, Manhattan-based director who found he right balance in Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding and soars with her film version of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake.
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