THE NAMESAKE's Wife, Mother, Woman

Mira Nair's THE NAMESAKE (2006) - based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri with a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala - is a gentle tale of time passing across cultures. As I watched this film, I found the characters & the story of their lives together to be calming & resonant in an understated way.

THE NAMESAKE chronicles the 30 or so years of the life of a family born in India & nurtured in America. A family with a house wife & mother, a college professor husband, & two American born children who grow to adulthood as they learn to come to terms with their Indian heritage, maneuvering cultural tensions & traditional family expectations.

Ultimately, this film follows most closely the path of the son & the father. However, ever hovering on the immediate sidelines is the story of the Indian born & bred house wife & mother (portrayed by Tabu). Her role in life was prescribed by her family - hers was an arranged marriage when she was still a teenager. Bravely & dutifully she accepted the challenge of leaving all she knew & held dear for a life with her new husband in a strange land. Though at first hard, she learned to adjust - charting a course with her husband for their family that involved a very personal mix of Indian heritage & adopted American life. She is blessed with a kind husband who values her in her assigned roles. He supports her. Eventually comes to love her. And - she comes to love him too - though they joke that to actually say so is the "American way." She is firm with her children, tolerant of their American teenager-ways. It is as if she knows that eventually her children will come full circle - and they do - she is exactly & wisely right.

And, in the end, this house wife & mother must face life alone - something she has never done. She could lean on her devoted children - but she does not. She chooses to chart a new course for her life. An independent life. What is so touching about the "liberation" of this women in her later years is that it is not grandiose - there are no "grand standing scenes" with heated women's lib rhetoric - it is not at the expense of husband & children - it is not in the face of an adversarial husband or family - she is never put in the position of having to take a terrifying or aggressive stand for herself. No. Not at all. She simply & suddenly finds herself a widow - with a unforeseen gap in her identity - & pursues a self-fulfilling path with her beloved husband in her heart.

The curious thing, I found, about Nair's film is that it seemed to be a subtle tussle between the story of the wife/mother & the story of the son. Which was the one I was supposed to be guided by? The title of the film implies the son. But - be that as it may - I was drawn to the story of the wife/mother. The son's story, though touching, was more predictable, while hers was not. Her final claiming of a new, vibrant - yet still respectful - form of widowhood was unexpected & thereby heartening.

In the end, Nair's film is not calculated to set the world on fire with any new &/or profound, keen insight into cultural clashing or melding, or to be remembered as a resounding call for feminism for Indian women. It is, instead, a less assuming tale that is directed & acted with understated poignancy.