Sunday, June 08, 2008

The Namesake [film]

 

I can't remember how I heard about this film, but somehow it ended up on my Netflix list and I'm not disappointed. It was an excellent movie on several levels and I give it a lot of stars.

It's about a Bengali family in America, and of course there are the standard struggles of an immigrant family with parents trying to understand their American children. But the ideas in the movie are much deeper, revolving around themes from the Russian novelist Nicolai Gogol and how we live up to (or fail to live up to) our names and identities.

There's no point showing this to elementary school kids, since the light profanity and "adult situations" will overshadow what they get out of the deeper themes, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in culture and what's it's like to live between the cracks.

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