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With a track record in award winning documentaries, an Oscar nomination for her feature film Salaam Bombay and the Golden Award at the Venice film for Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair fails (Vanity Affair, Salaam Bombay) to disappoint viewers with yet another poignant and embracing film. 

Based on Jhumpa Lairis Pulitzer Prize winning novel 'The Namesake', the film takes an engaging look at the lives of a three generation Bengali family, following a newly wedded couple on the heels of their arranged marriage, transported from their tradition bound life in Calcutta to the winter in New York.

The Namesake is a highly emotional family drama, which revolves around a young woman living in Calcutta, named Ashima who consents to an arranged marriage to Ashoke, a student living in the USA. A few days after their marriage, Ashima and Ashoke move to America to start a new life. After having children, both mother and father take great pride in the opportunities their sacrifices have afforded their children. Paradoxically, their son Gogol (Penn)

Ashoke (Khan) and Ashima Ganguli (Tabu) endeavour to come to terms with their new life in New York.  Recollections of the life Ashima has left behind become a melting pot for the two divided worlds, visions of the Hudson Bridge fade into the Ganges, whilst Ashmina pines for her family over an enduring long hard winter.  It was Jhumpa who said "I've never not been aware of the division in my life and I wanted to write that in this book".  Mira Nair also experienced dividing worlds and the movie is perhaps her most personal with which British/American immgrant families can identify strongly with.

The arrival of the their son Gogol, the protagonist, turns the tables somewhat as the two generations struggle to come to terms with their identities. Burdened by a heritage and stuck with the name of a Russian author, Gogol's lack of understanding lead him to question his existence, providing a penetrative insight into the emotions of his character, later going on to distinguish the Calcutta where his parents were born and the underlying effects of mortality.

The filming of contrasting environments plays to the intensity of each character. On one hand Calcutta 'The City of Joy', a city with all its vibrancy and extremity, on the other New York alien but new.

Tabu (Chandni Bar) portrays an engimatic Ashima in the leading role who finds it difficult to cope with the constant loneliness in a foreign country, but she patiently adapts to new versions of her old habits, while trying to recreate Calcutta in her American home, together with Irrfan Khan  (The Warrior), Kal Penn (Superman Returns) who plays their son Gogol, torn between finding his own unique identity without losing his heritage and Jacinda Barrett (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) who plays Max, Gogol's all-American girlfriend who endeavours whole heartedly to fit in with Gogol's cultural differences.

So elegantly and exquisitely captured, the cinematography combined with music composed by the popular and much respected Nitin Sawhney, who has recorded with The Philharmonic Orchestra, brings the film to life. The Namesake conveys a lasting note on existence and the world of immigrant families who struggle to make it in the West.

Speaking at The Times bfi 50th London Film Festival - interview by Jinny Nagra

Mira Nair

The film based on Jhumpa Lairis book.  Was it also based on your own experiences? You've spent time in both Calcutta and New York so was this something close to your heart?

Sure I mean I've lived exactly the road that the book and film takes me. I've lived between different worlds for a long time, so I know what it feels like when I know you look out of your window in New York and see the Hudson river and think it's the Ganges, its like the kind of living between worlds that the cinema captures, more potently than literature sometimes, so yes I infused so much of what I had experienced in the movie.

Which is your favourite city, New York or Calcutta?

My favourite place is being here now, being fully present wherever I am but my favourite place is pretty much my garden in Kampala.

A move from away from Bollywood. Was it your intention to do something in contrast to Monsoon Wedding?

I always want to surprise myself and surprise others. I don't like to repeat myself its not about an intention to move away from this or that its an intention to do full justice to the theme at hand and Jhumpa gave me inspiration in The Namesake.

The visual details and the intimacy was definitely something which I looked at and I informed myself of that.  There's so much about how these films can look.  I had lost my beloved mother in-law, an African woman who had come to New York for an operation and died suddenly from malpractice in the hospital.  I was devastated and read Jhumpa's book by chance that morning on the plane, I felt at first such a sense of solace that everything was explained so exquisitely in this novel.  The beauty in the novel is there is a lot of sense and a lot of air and decided I wanted it to be a balance between the novel and experience, I wanted to film the city's as they were, the money and the heart of people living between worlds. 

What's Next?

I am in the middle of making a feature documentary on the Beatles in India, in1968 when they went to India, in Rishikesh and wrote 48 songs. I was asked to do it and said yes as I wanted to investigate the nature of inspiration and how does it happen, so I'm in the middle of that.

Nitin Sawhney

Did Mira approach you herself with The Namesake. You've worked on the music for so many films before haven't you?

Yes I've done about 40 films.

Have you collaborated with Mira before?

No I haven't in the past, but I've been a fan of hers for a long time and so it was great when she wanted me to do the music for this, we get on really well.

What were your inspirations when producing the music for this film?

Well it was the film, it was such an emotive film that the performances are incredible.  Irfan Khan you know with him, I had been a massive fan since he did The Warrior and that was an amazing film and all the people involved in the film it's a great cast, what's great about it particularly is it's such a universal story.  I really wanted to engage with the emotional parts of the characters, they give such strong performances its very easy to be inspired, so its very touching, pretty much a film that you can imagine all generations enjoying and all people from different backgrounds, because its more about the emotion of the story than anything else. 

Have you ever spent time in Calcutta or New York?

I haven't spent time in Calcutta, I have spent some time in New York but I work with a lot of Bengali singers and musicians quite regularly so I have listened to a lot of Bengali music over the years and it forms the music.  Although it wasn't deliberately trying to be Bengali in a way the music is not culturally specific more about following the emotional journey, and the sense of narrative that comes from the film, but yes was a very enjoyable experience.

Did you read Jhumpa Lairi's book 'The Namesake' before the film started shooting?

I read the book and Jhumpa Lairi is a great writer and her interpretation of maladies is fantastic and her shorts stories, it's great to work with Mira on it too.

Mira is working on an African film presently. Any plans to collaborate with her on that?

I'd love to, at the moment I'm working with a lot of Orchestra for a couple of films, Playstation 3...  I quite often have music that is licensed out from albums. I am about to do some music for the proms, some electric music.