It also separates the movie into the life of Ashoke and the life of Gogol, with Ashima as the constant presence in both halves. The tensions in Gogol’s relationship with Moushumi are mostly inside Gogol’s mind in the novel: He wishes she would change her last name to “Ganguli,” and he resents her for telling her friends about his name change from “Gogol” to “Nikhil.” In the movie, these internal dialogues play out as arguments with Moushumi.The themes of The Namesake necessitate a lengthy scope and the movie stretches in time from the meeting of Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan) and his soon to be wife Ashima (Tabu) in an arranged marriage to the marriage of their son, Gogol (Kal Penn), more than twenty years later.
#WATCH THE NAMESAKE FULL MOVIE DRIVERS#
Where the novel shows Ashima feeling alone and confused in America inside her own mind, the movie includes scenes of Ashima accidentally shrinking clothes in American dryers and being honked at by American drivers for driving too slowly. After his father’s death, Gogol shaves his head in mourning, whereas in the novel, he merely remembers his father having done this after his grandfather’s death.įinally, for the sake of clarity, the movie makes a number of internal dialogues external. Gogol decides to be an architect while he is visiting the Taj Mahal in high school in the novel, he doesn’t make this decision until partway through college. In the movie, Ashima is a singer, and she returns to India at the very end of the film to continue her singing.
Instead of a younger brother named Rana, Ashima has a younger sister named Rini. The movie simply changes some details for convenience or dramatic effect. The ending is condensed by a year: Gogol and Moushumi separate the same year that Ashima sells her Boston house.
Instead of Ashoke telling Gogol the story behind his name during a visit home from college, this conversation occurs while Gogol and Maxine are visiting the Gangulis just before Ashoke’s death. The important events that happen to Gogol between first grade and twelfth grade (meeting Moushumi, his trip to India, his high school English class’ discussion of Nikolai Gogol) all occur during his senior year. In the movie, some events are moved around in time so they can still appear in the movie. Moushumi’s affair with Dmitri (whose name is Pierre in the movie) gets mentioned only briefly, and Dmitri/Pierre never appears onscreen. All of his college years are omitted, as are his relationships with Ruth and Bridget.
Gogol leaps in age from first grade to twelfth grade. To keep the story short enough for a feature film, the movie excludes many moments. The movie begins with Ashoke on the train, then moves to Ashima meeting Ashoke, subsequently progresses to their life in America, and so on. In the movie, however, nearly every event is in chronological order. The novel is full of flashbacks-for example, Chapter 1 begins with pregnant Ashima’s trip to the hospital, then jumps back to Ashima’s memory of meeting Ashoke, then returns to the labor, then goes back even further to Ashoke’s near-death experience, and finally ends with Gogol’s birth. One of the ways the novel differs from the movie is the order in which events are portrayed. Of course, watching the movie is not a substitute for reading the book: A number of details are lost or changed to make the story fit within the film medium. As movie adaptations of books go, the film adaptation is very faithful to the novel. In 2006, The Namesake was adapted into a film directed by Mira Nair by the same title.
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