The Namesake

You can read plenty of on-line reviews, so I will only add my own observations which you won't find anywhere else. I loved this film for being poetic and simple in story, and telling me what it is like to be a Bengali, by putting a family of these South Asians, as we must call them these days, alternately in America (against university backgrounds) and Calcutta. The story spans forty years and has its share of births, marriages and deaths. I found it a smooth believable narrative (asking for no effort to adjust to its cinematic conventions) with enough depth and beauty (in the actors, scenic backgrounds, music) to maintain total interest throughout. The director is Mira Nair. Now we want to see her Monsoon Wedding.

Recently we watched the two films about Elizabeth I (Elizabeth, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, both starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush), directed by Shekhar Kapur, another Indian director. There was much in them, and I ignore what the critics say. What I found hard to swallow was the cinematic conventions: I call them that but they seem to my unpractised eye to have been crafted by Kapur for the purpose. Many of the actors seem twenty-first century in their hairstyles and demeanour, which is better than the phony period swashbuckling that you used to get in historical movies. And Kapur eschews blocks of narrative text on screen, or voiceovers to give the historical background. Instead he makes big scenes carry more than their own weight by having to convey too much about the circumstances of history, at the cost of any realism. So that the whole thing becomes an animated slideshow or diorama. Still the gorgeousness of the costumes and interiors gave me plenty to chew on, and I was particularly taken with the carved stone and oak panels.