Fridae

Without a doubt, Mira Nair is one of top Asian directors working in Hollywood � sort of like the female version of Ang Lee. In an industry dominated by too many overgrown boys obsessed with CGI, Mira has managed to churn one thought-provoking drama after another. Oftentimes, these humanistic films turn out to be both critical and commercial successes.

The more versatile Ang Lee may not have necessarily used the medium of film to examine Chinese identity, but Mira Nair has almost always used Hollywood money to examine her Indian identity in a globalized world. Films like Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding and her latest The Namesake centre on modern Indian characters who are trying to juggle the demands of their Asian traditions in their increasingly Westernized worlds. It is a conundrum that the New York-based India-born director knows only too well.

The Namesake is beautiful-crafted and profound film that spans decades, continents and generations. It begins in the 1960s when a young Bengali couple has just moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to start a new life and a family. The wife gives birth to a baby boy and, according to Bengali tradition, the boy must be named by the grandmother. However the letter from the grandmother in India never arrives and the baby gets stuck with name Gogol, a homage to the husband's favorite Russian author.

The story follows Gogol as he grows up resenting his ridiculous Western name and tries to adopt the Indian name, Nikhil. His two names, of course, are symbols of his double identity as an American and an Indian. How he negotiates the demands of his two cultures is what makes The Namesake an intimate and intelligent film, and an especially resonant one for Asian city-dwellers.