“Your life is about to change.  Embrace the new.  Don’t forget the old.”  Although this wisdom is shared with Ashima Ganguli as a new bride, it sets the stage for her whole family’s story.



The Namesake is a family saga covering two generations of an immigrant family from India.  Ashima and Ashoke meet shortly before the marriage arranged by their families.  Ashoke is studying in the U.S. and brings Ashima to their new life in a new world.  Before long they have a son, whom they call Gogol (after a Russian writer).  Gogol is also given the name Nikhil.

Having two names reflects Gogol’s double identity.  Unlike his parents, he is not an immigrant.  He was born here and is in every way American.  After high school he switches to using his other name, which is shortened to Nick.  Regardless of which name he uses he is always both Gogol and Nick; he always carries the identity of his background and the identity of the American culture he has grown up in.

Often, we fail to recognize the gifts given to us until later in life.  When Gogol graduates from high school, his father gives him a book of Nikolai Gogol’s works.  The young man is somewhat chagrined that his father would give him something so useless.  But many years later, he discovers within that book the freedom that the book (and Gogol’s namesake) represented to the father.

The tension of past and present is the main conflict for the film.  It plays out in the struggle Ashima has in a society half a world away from her family.  It plays out in the generational issues between Gogol and his parents.  It plays out in Gogol’s internal conflict of his place in his family.  It plays out in seeing the relative merits of two very different ways of life.

While there is a difference between the generations, it would oversimplify the film to see it only as an intergenerational conflict.  Much of the story is the love story of Ashoke and Ashima.  Whereas most of us don’t like the idea of arranged marriages, for these two their life together grew into a loving relationship—more so than the relationships Gogol has with women he chooses himself, whether of American or Indian background.

Like other family epics, this is also a story of a journey—not only a journey from India to America, but a journey to a fulfilled life.  Whether it is the loneliness and coldness of a student apartment for Ashima, or Gogol’s struggle to fit into upper-middle-class America (complete with a WASP family he’s more at home with than his own), or finding new ways of living after terrible personal tragedies, the journeys of life can be arduous and tortuous.

In The Namesake Ashoke, Ashima, and Gogol have an amazing journey. We learn that it is “a journey to a place where there was nowhere else to go.”  Thus is the journey we call life.