Long wait was worth it for 'The Namesake' author

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

It has been a long wait for Jhumpa Lahiri to see director Mira Nair's movie version of her best-selling novel, "The Namesake," come to the screen.

Lahiri, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., had seen a rough cut of the film in the fall of 2005, and liked it. But then the film went back into the editing room.

She saw the completed film again last summer, "privately and with my family in New York."

"The Namesake" encompasses 30 years and two generations of an Indian family who have moved from Calcutta to the United States, much like Lahiri's own family. And seeing the film, she said in a phone call from New York, was an emotional experience for all of them.

"My parents were very moved," she said. "It was a very powerful experience, very thrilling for them to see a story that is not a literal rendering of their lives, but of their experiences."

However, even that showing didn't match the third time she saw it, "in a real theater a couple of weeks ago in Calcutta, with real people in the audience . . . the snacks, the murmurs from the audience, it was fun. They were very enthusiastic, very excited."

Lahiri's family immigrated from India to England, where Jhumpa was born nearly 40 years ago. When she was 3, they immigrated to the United States. Her father, Amir, is a librarian at the University of Rhode Island, Her mother, Tapati, is a teacher's assistant in South Kingstown, R.I.

In Calcutta this month, some people in the audience were members of her extended family, "the ones who had watched other family members go, but had stayed put.

"I was interested in seeing my relatives' reactions because I feel the film is so much about the United States, life here, putting down roots here. I was interested to see it through the eyes of people who had never been here."

Following last summer's screening in New York, "The Namesake" began to be screened at film festivals from Colorado to London. Then, said Nair, "it went into hibernation."

Originally slated for November, its national release was delayed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It finally had its "world premiere" in New York March 6, to generally good reviews, and then slowly began rolling out across the country.

Nair, whose debut feature film "Salaam Bombay!" was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film in 1988, said the decision to bounce her film from November to March was a marketing decision made by the studio. "They decided it might get overwhelmed in the awards season. They felt it should play and play and play for months."

She said that although The Namesake is playing the "art house" circuit, where films are geared to more discerning audiences, the studio has told her they have great confidence in it and feel that because its story of a close-knit family has broad appeal, it also will be shown in multiplexes.

Part of the appeal for younger audiences, who might not be drawn to a film that begins in Calcutta, tackles cultural and generational differences and has no slapstick or car chases, is the presence of Kal Penn, the star of the youth comedy cult hits "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" and "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." Penn gives a remarkably touching performance as Gogol, whose coming-of-age story sparks the center of the film as he is torn between his strong family ties and the attractions of American life.

"He was essentially cast by my 15-year-old son," said Nair with a laugh, "who went to bed every night saying, 'Tell me in the morning it's Kal Penn. Tell me in the morning it's Kal Penn. Tell me in the morning it's Kal Penn.' "

Although in Lahiri's book the Ganguli family leaves India for Boston, in the movie they arrive in New York City.

Nair said the change of locations was easier because in the book, although the Gangulis first move into a cold-water flat in Boston and later into its suburbs, Gogol later leaves for New York. The shifting locations would have meant an expensive move for the film crew as well.

"I've lived in those cold-water flats in Cambridge myself," said Nair, who is a Harvard graduate. "I know what they're like. But I didn't think the story gained that much from going to a new city. And there's not that much difference between suburban Boston and suburban New York."

Lahiri, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000 for her collection of short stories, "Interpreter of Maladies," found great success, both critically and sales wise, with "The Namesake." But she said she has no plans to write a sequel to the latter book, even if the movie is a great success.